Joan MiroAidez L’Espagne. Help Spain. 1937.

Original colour stencil print - pochoir. 1937. With the printed script signature and the printed text written by Miró in support of the populace and against the Fascist forces of Franco.

Miro’s first and most famous ‘political/surrealist’ image’ from the 1930’s pre World War 2 period.

Drawn and stencil printed at the ‘Moderne Imprimerie’ Paris 1937. Issued by 'Cahiers d’Art', Paris 1937. (Issue no 4-5). Edition size not known.

Reference: Dupin - Miró Engraver, vol 1 no 17. Illustrated and with further commentary in the introduction page 26.

Provenance: UK Private Collection for over 20 years.

Note: This is the first issue of ‘Aidez L’Espagne’. Really fine first issue impressions, as here, are now very scarce. There were also some impressions printed subsequently which do not have the text.

Superb impression with brilliant colours and with the paper surface without any rubbing. The ink surface still showing some of the brushstrokes from the brush used for the inking of the yellow. On medium stiff cream wove paper – still with the fold-over protective ‘cover sheet’ from he issue in the 'Cahiers d’Art' review. Image sheet: 315 x 245mm.

Note: The central figure represents a Catalan farmer with his traditional ‘barretina’ – red cap.

It was such figures as this who formed much of the Northern Spanish resistance to Franco’s forces and who suffered so much. Miró created this work in the same year as Picasso’s ‘Guernica’.