Lot n° 158
Estimation :
15000 - 20000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 26 000EUR
MIRÓ JOAN (1893-1983).
19 L.A.S. and 6 cards a.s. "Miró", 1958-1973, to Louis BRODER; 49 pages in various sizes (several to his address in Palma de Mallorca), envelopes, mounted on tabs (or detached) in a folio volume bound in half blue morocco with corners, slipcase.
Nice correspondence with the publisher Louis Broder about their common achievements.
Specialized in prints, Louis Broder started his activity at the end of the thirties and was one of the great post-war art publishers, next to Maeght or Tériade. A friend of the surrealists, knowing perfectly how to combine poetry and illustrations, attentive to artistic modernity as much as he was attached to craftsmanship, Louis Broder was for Miró an ideal interlocutor. The tone of their correspondence bears witness to a complicity and friendship that went beyond the professional relationship, but the same demand for perfection in their joint creations, with the help of the lithographer Fernand Mourlot and the pressman Jean Célestin, who are often named here: René Crevel's La Bague d'aurore (1957), René Char's Nous avons (1959), and Le Lézard aux plumes d'or, the great project that occupied both men from 1963 onwards and was completed in November 1971, a superb book entirely conceived by Miró with the long genesis to which this correspondence bears witness.
Palma de Mallorca 25.VII.1957. He has received his copies of The Ring of Dawn, the numbers of which he gives and which he finds "very successful [...] We have all worked very well, [...] I am happy to collaborate with you, who undertake things with passion to see them through to the end, to the last limit"...
Palma de Mallorca 30.XII.1958. Miró thanks Broder for having spoiled him during his stay in Paris, "with beautiful papers and magnificent engravings [...] CHAR's poem is extraordinary, one of the most beautiful texts I have ever read. I am very happy to illustrate it, the model has just been completed and I believe we will do something very good. Char's text, so grandiose, requires something of extreme sobriety"... 28.III.1959. The continuation of La Bague d'Aurore is exhibited in his retrospective at the Momart in New York, which has "a very big impact"; he is going to leave for America... 18.IV, on Nous avons. The trial proofs are "magnificent, the background material is a great success"; as for the coloring proofs: "It's done, I hope you will like the way I have treated them". As for the cover, he disagrees with Broder: "I see the double-page cover, which gives the architecture of the book a monumental aspect, and goes with the grandiose text of
René". It is also necessary to move the page numbers, "which were taking too much plastic importance. We're going to make a big little book, which is more difficult"... New York 20.V. He gives the press release: "It is nevertheless necessary, and this is of capital importance, that the interior of the book has this power of plastic expression, that the accents of colors have this vehemence, otherwise there would be a shift. The book must be marked by a great tension of spirit, as the text and the plastic design require"...
Palma de Mallorca 26.II.1963. Preparing "a big ceramic exhibition", he has to "move all the time to supervise the firings and the baking at ARTIGAS". As for the project of the Lizard, "it is necessary to follow all the vicissitudes to find solutions and to arrive at a perfect success"... 17.VII: "I've been thinking a lot about our book, I think we're on the right track [...] Célestin has worked very well and the results are, so far, excellent". He recommends Broder to go often to Mourlot's house to check the progress of the work... He thinks "to add to the book two double pages which will still enrich it by a new accent of poetry, in the spirit of my most recent works"...
Montroig 24.VIII. "The litho for the book is a perfect success, if we manage to maintain the same tone in the whole, [...] we will make something that will have a classic dignity". He has been looking for new texts to enrich the book: "This literary stage in my life is a unique document that explains many things". This will lead him to "make new pure lithos, treated in a different spirit from those already engraved, which will blend in very well with the rest. It will be necessary to treat them in a direct and brutal way"... 19.IX. He added new texts and lithos to the book: "While maintaining the unity and architecture, I am thinking of using new techniques.
[...] with a work like this, it is necessary to go to the end, without neglecting anything to obtain an exceptional result, so the collaboration between all of us is of primary importance"... Palma de Mallorca 1.XII. "The result seems to me to be of a very high quality and great craftsmanship. Putting the last pages of calligraphy next to it that
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