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Toute Épreuve
(original edition)

Item date(s): 1958

Joan Miró  - (illustrated by)
Paul Eluard  - (author)


Pages: 55pp + 27 folded
Size: 335mm


Place publication: Geneva
Publisher: Gerald Cramer
Exhibition 2019-1

Additional notes:
See also GB/1973 for the facsimile edition.

From Sims Reed catalogue. E/AB Fair November 2015:

30. Joan MIRO. (Eluard, Paul).

A Toute Epreuve.

Geneva. Gérald Cramer. 1958.

Folio. (335 x 260 mm). [55 unnumbered leaves; 27 folded sheets, 1 inserted single sheet]. Illustrated with 80 colour woodcuts - four conceived as double-page spreads - by Miró (including that for the cover). Loose as issued in original publisher's cream printed wrappers with Miró's woodcut, parchment-backed wooden board chemise with gilt title to spine and matching slipcase. Miró's greatest illustrated book and one of the best productions of the twentieth century.

From the edition limited to 130 copies on Arches signed by the artist on the justification, with this one of 80 ordinary copies.

From his first arrival in Paris after the First World War, Miró was fascinated by the avant garde and the links between the languages of poetry and painting. Friendship with Masson, and the studio they shared, enabled Miró to meet many of his literary heroes, including those Surrealists - then a rising movement - with whom he would collaborate. After the publication of his first signed and numbered lithograph in 1930, Miró illustrated works by Queneau, Péret, Char, Tzara, Breton and Eluard among many others. This work with Eluard was the third important collaborative project, which included 'Solidarité' (1938) and 'Un Poème dans chaque livre' (1956); Miró's woodcuts for the book, begun in 1948 were not completed until ten years later.

From Ursus Catalogue 288 and Ursus Catalogue 327:

1900-2002. Illustrated Books, Documents and Reference Books.

Catalogue 288, Item 51. Catalogue 327, Item 53.

Joan Miró. A Toute Épreuve. By Paul Eluard. 46ff. Illustrated with 79 woodcuts by Miró printed in colour. 4to., 320 x 250mm, loose as issued in original colour printed wrappers illustrated by Joan Miró. In original slipcase, in a cloth folding box. Geneva: Gérald Cramer, 1958.

Together with: An Original Woodblock for the Printed Edition, carved by Miró himself. Block for a double-page spread, 325 x 500mm. Preserved in matching half-morocco folding box.

A unique copy of one of the great monument of twentieth-century book illustration, and THE high watermark of Miró’s career as a book-illustrator. This copy accompanied by one of the original woodblocks used in the making of the book, which is itself a Miró sculpture.

"One of the most triumphant feats of book illustration in our century" (Soby). Book is limited to 80 copies of the regular issue, from a complete edition of 130 copies.

For this edition Miró cut 233 woodcuts with the collaboration of Enric Tormo; together these men spent the better part of eleven years on the project. Miró used planks of wood, plastic wood, wire, old wood engravings, and bark paper to achieve the truly exuberant embellishments that practically dance on the pages of this perfectly produced book. these famous prints were prepared and printed by Jacques Fr élaut at the famous Atelier Lacouri ére in Paris. "I am completely absorbed by the damn book. I hope to create something sensational, the most important achievement in engraving since Gauguin" (Miró in a letter to the publisher Cramer, April 1948).

"A Toute Épreuve is a compendium of so many of the formal and icongraphic ideas that Miró explored throughout his career, and in many ways even represents a culmination of his aesthetic goals" (Braziller, in preface to the 1948 edition of A Toute Épreuve). "A brilliance of invention and a vitality of form and colour sweep through the pages of this most distinguished example of Surrealist book production" (Garvey). Fine copy of "one of the most original and beautiful books of the century" (Castleman).

The Artist and the Book 1860-1960 in Western Europe and the United States. Hacker Art Books, New York. Eleanor M. Garvey. With an introduction by Philip Hofer. p 209.

Joan Miró. Soby. p 29 and pp 135-139.

A Century of Artists Books. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman. With a foreword by Richard E. Oldenburg. pp 34 & 101.

From Manet to Hockney: Modern Artists' Illustrated Books. Carol Hogben and Rowan Watson. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. p 121.

Miró Engravings I. Dupin. p 161-234.

Joan Miró, The Illustrated Books: Catalogue Raisonné. Cramer. p 49.

Artists’ Books in the Modern Era, 1870-2000. The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2001. Robert Flynn Johnson (curated with an introduction) and a preface by Brent Sikkema. California Palance of the Legion of Honor 6/10/2001-6/1/2002. p 139.

Joan Miró - Gérald Cramer. Une correspondence à toute épreuve. Édition, introduction et notes par Jean-Charles Giroud. Patrick Cramer éditeur, Geneva, 2002.

Una importante colección de Obra Gráfica y Libros Ilustrados de Joan Miró. Auction catalogue. Sotheby’s 22/02/1989. Barcelona, Spain. Procedentes de la Fundación Joan Miró de Barcelona.

Notre Livre: À Toute épreuve. A Collaboration between Joan Miró and Paul Éluard. Princeton University Library, New Jersey. Ainsley Brown.

See also GB/1973 for the facsimile edition.

Illustrated with 79 woodcuts by Miró printed in colour. Loose as issued in original colour printed wrappers illustrated by Joan Miró. In original chemise and bamboo slipcase. Preserved in a red morocco box, also containing an original woodblock for the Printed Edition, carved by Miró himself. Block for illustration: 325 x 500mm. (See: Dupin 211).

Exhibition notes:
Samplings: International Artists' Books and Archive on the Book Arts

JGCBA, WAM

26 March to 6 July 2019

Ref: GB/14977











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