Artisti: Joan Miro
Title: Plate No.7 from "Ubu Roi"
Medium : Original Lithograph on Arches paper, Signed & Numbered in pencil, 1966
Dimensions: 21.2 x 29.5 in, 53 x 75 cm

The grotesque play Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), written in 1896, has often been seen as a precursor to surrealism and had a strong influence on the writers and artists of the subsequent generation, including Joan Miró. Jarry's greedy and evil character King Ubu reminded the artist uncannily of the Spanish dictator José Franco. Like Picasso in his two prints Sueño Y Mentira de Franco (see lot 89), Miró uses Ubu’s story to at once ridicule the dictator and to denounce the injustices and brutalities perpetrated by the regime in his native Spain.

Miró created three large series based on the story of Ubu: Ubu roi (1966), Ubu aux Baléares (1971) and L’Enfance d’Ubu (1975); a total of one hundred lithographs, many of which contain only thinly disguised caricatures of Franco. Rather than his signature use of cheerful primary colours, Miró in this series employed an equally vibrant, but somewhat different, slightly poisonous palette, which adds to the sense of the ridiculous and grotesque.

This extraordinary work from Miro epitomizes his crucial shift from the realist art that characterized his previous canvases to the painting of imaginative space. Miro’s sudden transition from descriptive realism to surrealism took place shortly after the birth of the surrealist movement in Paris in 1924. The artist was captivated by the pictorial possibilities that surrealism offered with its insistence on the subconscious in the world of dreams. He began to produce highly experimental canvases, populating his paintings with imaginary ideograms on the subconscious in the world of dreams. Producing several highly experimental canvases, he populated his works with imaginary ideograms.

Galerie Filali is pleased to collaborate with our personal friend Galerie Mourlot, New York, to present a collection of rare lithographs from legendary Parisian printing house Atelier Mourlot.

Founded in Paris in 1852, Atelier Mourlot has been synonymous with fine art lithography for over 150 years. From 1930, under the direction of the founder’s grandson, Fernand Mourlot, leading artists were invited to the studio to collaborate on traditional limestone lithography. For painters like Joan Miro, the medium provided an exciting new form of expression.

Each individual work of art comes with a Certificate of Provenance, signed, dated, stamped, and numbered by Eric Mourlot. Stored in a clear protective sleeve accompanying your piece, this Certificate of Provenance is recognized by all the major auction houses should you care to resell at any point. This ensures the validity of its origin and its being in the Mourlot archives since its production.