Joan Miró (1893–1983), Composition IX, 1972

Workshop lithograph printed on limestone; BFK Rives vellum paper; 31 x 49 cm (inside the mat); framed in a frame measuring 44 x 62 cm;
Publisher: Maeght Gallery; Printed by Atelier Mourlot.
References: Catalogue Raisonné, Maeght Editeur, 1981, Vol. I, p. 189
Mourlot Catalog: 865
Cramer catalog, “Joan Miró. The Illustrated Books,” Geneva 1989, no. 160
This composition was created by Miró in 1972 specifically for the book by Michel Leiris—the author of the first of six volumes of a monumental study of Joan Miró’s work—and is one of eleven lithographs accompanying Leiris’s text.
Michel Leiris (1901–1990)—French writer and ethnologist. Initially associated with the Surrealist group, including Max Jacob, André Masson, and Pablo Picasso. Co-founder (along with Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, and Jules Monnerot) of the Collège de Sociologie. From 1931 to 1933, he participated in a research expedition to Africa, after which he wrote a monumental treatise on inner experience—*L’Afrique fantôme* (1934). From 1929 to 1935, he underwent psychoanalysis, which resulted in the writing of his famous intimate biography *The Age of Man* (1939) and its sequel, *La règle du jeu* (1948–1975). He lectured at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and after World War II became a proponent of existentialism as espoused by Jean-Paul Sartre.