Miro’s substantial skill with etching and engraving was developed over many years of learning and collaboration. The Cubist painter Marcoussis introduced Miro to the techniques and taught him the art of dry point, burin and etching. During the 1930’s, and up until World War II, Miro engraved in Marcoussis’ studio. His love of tools, techniques, and the friendly advice given by Marcoussis quickly turn him into an accomplished engraver.
Miro’s first book illustrations date from this period, but it is after the war that his collaboration with poets really got going. While Miro spent the war years isolated and without engraving possibilities, an earlier collaboration and retrospective in New York resulted in a commission that took him to the United States in 1947. Miro again began engraving at Atelier 17, which was operated by master printer and artist Stanley W. Hayter. It was during this period that he was introduced to a totally different area of copperplate engraving, in which the tool was complemented by an inexhaustible range of techniques and color. Lift ground process, soft-ground etching, asphalt grain and aquatint only hint at what was involved in this period of experimentation.
From 1948 on Miro, who was living in Barcelona, made frequent trips to Paris to work on lithography at the Mourlot Press, and engraving at the atelier Lacourière, where he worked in close collaboration with Jacques Frelaut. Miro loosened up in comparison with the rigorous and somewhat systematic experimentation done at Atelier 17 and began to let himself go in improvisations; he worked with more spontaneity, freedom and fantasy. He began to treat color like an animation of the surface, giving it its own role to play. The engravings are marked by buoyancy and inventiveness.
From 1957 on Miro worked in a studio opened by the engraver Aldo Crommelynck and the prints followed one another at an ever increasing speed. Aquatint is frequently used for painterly effects or to obtain a dense, colored surface. His mastery led him to undertake large engravings and an ever freer improvisation.
Source: Miro Engravings, vol. I (1926 – 1960), Jacques Dupin, 1989, Rizzoli International Publications
