Joan Miró

Bougrelas and his Mother III, from Series for King Ubu [Bougrelas et sa Mère III, from: Suites pour Ubu Roi], by Joan Miró, 1966.

• Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983).
• Lithograph in colors on arches Wove paper.
• Hand signed and numbered.
• Part of an edition of 75.
• Printed by Atelier Mourlot, Paris.
• Published by Tériade Éditeur, Paris.
• This work is presented unframed.

The work was part of a portfolio entitled Roi Ubu [King Ubu] realised by the artist in 1966.

Ubu Roi (Ubu the King) is a play by Alfred Jarry, premiered in 1896. It is a precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd and Surrealism.

It is the first of three stylized burlesques in which Jarry satirizes power, greed, and their evil practices—in particular the propensity of the complacent bourgeois to abuse the authority engendered by success.

It was followed by Ubu Cocu [Ubu Cuckolded] and Ubu Enchaîné [Ubu Enchained], neither of which was performed during Jarry's 34-year life.

Père Ubu first appeared in 1888 in a collaboration between Alfred Jarry and a fellow student at the Rennes Lycée, but his first public appearance came in 1893 when Jarry published some of prose works in an avant-garde review, the Minutes de Sable Mémorial. His triumph, however, was on the stage when the director of the Theâtre de l'Oeuvre, Lugne-Poe staged a production of Ubu Roi.

The audience received the play with screams, whistles, fist-shaking, the critics took up the cudgels and the play became infamous and its author an avant-garde hero.

Joan Miró used Ubu Roi as a subject of his most famous series, made of 50 1940 lithographs known as "the Barcelona Series".

These pictures could be Ubu Roi but they also satirize General Franco and his generals after he had won the Spanish Civil War. He revisited this subject many times in his oeuvre.

Hand signed.

Cramer, P. (1989). Miró: Catalogue des Livres Ilustrées. Paris: Edition Cramer, Reference: Cramer 108.

Mourlot, F. & Leiris, M. (1977). Joan Miró: Der Lithograph, Vol. III 1964-1969. Geneva: Weber. Reference: Mourlot 409.