JOAN MIRO 1893-1983
Montroig 1893-1983 Mallorca (Spanish)

Title: Ubu's Childhood / L'Enfance d'Ubu, 1975
Technique: Original Hand Signed and Numbered Lithograph in colours on Arches paper
Paper Size: 32.1 x 50.5 cm / 12.6 x 19.8 in

Additional Information: This original lithograph is hand signed in pencil by the artist "Miro" at the lower right corner of the image. It is also hand numbered in pencil "108/120". The work was part of a portfolio entitled "L'Enfance d'Ubu" (Ubu's Childhood) realised by the artist in 1975. It was printed by Mourlot, Paris and published by Tériade Editeur, Paris. Our print is one of the few impressions realised for the front cover of the portfolio.

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 stylised burlesques in which Jarry satirises 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 satirise General Franco and his generals after he had won the Spanish Civil War.

He revisited this subject many times in in oeuvre.

Literature: 1. Patrick Cramer, Weber Genf, 1992, Miro: The Lithographs, Vol.5.

Reference: Cramer 1014

2. Patrick Cramer, Cramer Edition, 1989, Miro Catalogue des Livres Ilustrés.

Reference: Cramer 204