The poet Paul Éluard (1895–1952), the publisher Gérald Cramer (1916–1991) and the artist Joan Miró (1893–1983) produced one of the most exceptional artist’s books of the 20th century in 1958. Éluard wrote the poems between 1929 and 1930. Éditions surréalistes published these texts in 1930, but it was only in 1947, that the project of publishing the poems as an artist’s book with illustrations by Joan Miró was born.
Miró came up with the idea of making the publication a polychrome sculpture as much as a book. He made 233 woodcuts, which were carved and printed in colour. With the poems, they form a series of landscapes of words and images. The book was published in 1958 in an edition of just 130 copies and shown for the first time at Galerie Berggruen in Paris. Cooperating with the Fundació Joan Miró, the Fondation will tell the story of this splendid publication through correspondence, photographs, woodcuts, and the six conserved mock-ups. Four copies of the original edition on display allow a view all of the pages.