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Untitled

Artist Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893–1983)
Title Untitled
Plate Number Plate XL
Series Barcelona Series
Date 1939, published 1944
Medium Lithograph on paper
Dimensions Image: 27 1/2 × 20 5/8 in. (69.9 × 52.4 cm)
Sheet: 27 1/2 × 20 5/8 in. (69.9 × 52.4 cm)
Credit Line Museum Purchase with funds from the Hope Fund, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 48.3

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About this Work

In 1939, the Surrealist artist Joan Miró began a major print series—named after his birthplace—as a response to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and the onset of World War II. However, rather than presenting a realistic interpretation of war, Miró’s dreamlike images evoke enigmatic symbols of human suffering. While many of the series’ fifty large plates include distorted bodies and anguished faces, this print reflects the more playful motifs associated with Miró’s personal iconography—childlike figures, eight-pointed stars, squiggles and swirls, biomorphic creatures, and the artist’s thumbprints. Nevertheless, tears seem to stream down the dirty, or bruised, face and black eye of the central figure. While ambitious in scope, the portfolio was issued in a small edition of only five impressions and two artist’s proofs, perhaps due to a paper shortage during the war years.


January 23, 1948, Indiana University Art Museum purchase from Buchholz Gallery, New York, NY (with funds from the Henry Radford Hope Fund) (per invoice, Curt Valentin Papers, Museum of Modern Art Archives, CV.III.35 and IUAM records, purchased fro $60.00)

ca. 1944–1948, Buchholz Gallery, New York, NY

Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.

January 1948, "Hope Fund Prints," Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

Plate Number Plate XL
Series Title Barcelona Series

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"Untitled | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2025. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=48.3