20th Century         Contemporary 

BACON                 CHAPMAN BROS

BRAQUE                PETER DOIG

CHAGALL              GARY HUME

DUBUFFET            ANISH KAPOOR

MATISSE              GRAYSON PERRY

MIRO                   MARC QUINN

PICASSO              GAVIN TURK

                          DAMIEN HIRST   

 “For me, engraving is a major means of expression. It has been a means of liberation, expansion and discovery. Even though, at the beginning, I was a prisoner of its constraints, its ‘cuisine,’ its traditional tools and recipes. I had to resist them, to extend them, and then an immense field of possibilities opened up to my eye and hand…"

Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983)

20th Century Master

Born in Barcelona, Spain in 1893, Miro was the son of a goldsmith and grandson of a blacksmith. At school he was a mediocre student, deriving his only satisfaction from drawing classes. When after much resistance from his family, he was finally allowed to attend art school, the academic discipline was very difficult for him. Both he and his teachers recognized his inability to “see” objectively. When confronted with still lifes or models, he was encouraged to record them as he “felt” them, emotionally or affectively, but not “objectively” as others saw them. These early hardships were to be in his favor as his unique vision began to be noticed and appreciated by art dealers and patrons alike.

After his first successful one man show in Barcelona in 1918, Miro decided to further develop his skills in Paris, where both art and literature were undergoing a revolutionary transformation. By 1924 Miró had joined the Surrealist meetings held by André Breton and as he worked to develop his personal painting style, found himself drawn to poetry. Miró saw his work as a kind of visual poetry saying “I make no distinction between making art and writing poetry” – the signs and symbols he created in his pictures were like the words and phrases of his Surrealist poet friends. It was poetry that led Miró to printmaking, creating over 100 original illustrations for verse. Impassioned by the creative atmosphere of the print studio, Miró worked to master the most rigorous of engraving techniques including dry point, burin, etching, soft-ground and color aquatint.

A master of innovation and a tireless craftsman, Miró’s graphic output is one of the most rich and diverse of the Modern Masters. His greatest technical advancement was the development of carborundum etching. Determined to add a textural surface to his graphic works, Miró devised a way to create a raised surface on the metal etching plate that would result in a rich embossment on the finished print. More than 72 masterpieces of his works on paper were made incorporating this bold technique. Miró also executed several magnificent pochoirs during his career. By limiting himself to several pure colors and simplifying the forms of his designs, he created some of his most highly stylized and expressive works.