Joan Miró created over 250 illustrated books. These were known as Livres d’ Artiste.
One such work was published in 1974, at the urging of the widow of the French poet Robert Desnos, titled Les pénalités de l’enfer ou les nouvelles Hébrides (‘The Penalties of Hell or The New Hebrides’).
It was a set of 25 lithographs, five in black, and the others in colors.
How did I think up my drawings and my ideas for painting? Well I’d come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I’d go to bed, and sometimes I hadn’t any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling
Joan Miró
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Joan Miró
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Joan Miró’s oft-quoted interest in the assassination of painting is derived from a dislike of bourgeois art, which he believed was used as a way to promote propaganda and cultural identity among the wealthy. Specifically, Miró responded to Cubism in this way, which by the time of his quote had become an established art form in France. He is quoted as saying ‘I will break their guitar,’ referring to Picasso’s paintings, with the intent to attack the popularity and appropriation of Picasso’s art by politics.
