Plate (folio 14) from Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie)

Plate (folio 14) from Il était une petite pie (Once There Was a Little Magpie) by Joan Miró is a key example of the artist's engagement with typography and Surrealism during the interwar period. This influential work, created between 1927 and 1928 and published in 1928, is a pochoir print derived from an illustrated book featuring a sequence of eight such images. The book, a collaboration between the Spanish artist and Surrealist writer Lise Hirtz, exemplifies the cross-disciplinary approach of the European avant-garde, where text and image share equal expressive weight in conveying abstract and often nonsensical narratives.

The medium of pochoir, a highly precise stencil technique, was employed for this illustrated book, allowing Miró to render his spontaneous, biomorphic forms with crisp boundaries and remarkable color saturation. Unlike traditional etching or lithography, the pochoir method emphasizes flat, unmodulated fields of color, enhancing the graphic impact of the composition. In this particular folio, Miró utilizes his signature vocabulary of floating, calligraphic lines and abstract symbols set against a stark, unadorned background. The visual tension between seemingly random, symbolic elements and careful placement is central to the piece’s narrative, reflecting the Surrealist drive toward automatism and the interpretation of the subconscious.

As an Illustrated Book, Il était une petite pie is recognized not only for its artistic merit but for its importance in the history of fine art prints and artists’ books. This work highlights Miró’s profound impact on modern art, bridging pure abstraction with the narrative freedom of Surrealism. The inclusion of this piece in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art confirms its status as an influential artifact from the Spanish modern movement. The existence of these high-quality prints ensured that Miró’s complex artistic language was widely disseminated during the pivotal years of 1927–28, published 1928, solidifying his reputation as a master of abstract composition.