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Joan Miró 1893 - 1983 Le Lézard aux Plumes d'Or – Etude, 1965 Signed, dated and numbered Gouache on tracing paper 14 x 19 5/8 in, 35.5 x 50 cm Provenance Collection Louis Broder, France Private Collection Exhibitions 2013: Lindau, Stadtmuseum Lindau, Miró – Sternennächte, 24 March - 1 September Literature Study for one of the fifteen lithographs of the album Le lézard aux plumes d'or, text and images by Joan Miró, Paris, Broder, 1971 Nicolas Calas, Joan Miró lithographe IV: 1969-1972, ed. Maeht, Paris, 1981, n°812, reproduction of the lithograph Dan Cohn, Tim L. Yarger, Joan Miró, Beverly Hills, 2001, p. 101, reproduction of the lithograph Patrick Kramer, Joan Miró The Illustrated books: Catalogue Raisonné, Genève, 1989, pp.370-371, reproduction of the lithograph Miró's lifelong interest in poetry led him to author and illustrate over 250 books. This work from 1965 is a study for one of the 18 lithographs Miró created in 1967 to accompany his poem Le Lezard aux plumes d'or. Within a year of moving to Paris, Miró's studio on Rue Blomet received regular visits from his new literary friends. He began to interact and collaborate with writers and poets associated with the Surrealist circle, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Antonin Artaud. The first illustrations he did were a set of lithographs for Tristan Tzara's L'Arbre Des Voyageurs in 1929. Following this he illustrated the poetry of numerous authors, including Paul Eluard, André Breton and René Char. Miró claimed that he made "no distinction between painting and poetry". Typical of Miró's imagery from the 1960s, in which surreal creatures float in space and are highlighted by a glowing sun, the lizard hovers in the centre of the paper. The lizard represented for Miró his homeland in Catalonia. As a child he had watched these creatures darting up and down the walls of the family farmhouse and they feature in many of his works, including his early masterpiece The Farm of 1921. During the mid-1960s, Miró reduced pictorial elements to dots and lines on a monochromatic background. By juxtaposing bold primary colours with black, Miró could create a dynamism and vitality, as we have here with the black lizard surrounded by colourful dots in bright primary colours. Moreover, through the use of interconnecting shapes and patterns, Miró makes clear the connection between Earth, its creatures and the Universe.