40 - René CHAR. *Le Marteau sans maître*. Paris, Le Vent d’Arles, 1976.

René CHAR. *Le Marteau sans maître*. Paris, Le Vent d’Arles, 1976. Folio format, loose-leaf, decorated gray paper cover with inlaid design, publisher’s box in red half-basane. A large illustrated book featuring 23 original color etchings and aquatints by Joan Miró, including eight double-page spreads. A single edition of 215 copies printed on large-format Arches vellum, signed by the poet and the artist (no. 91). Collaboration with Miró “No painter was more frequently associated with René Char’s poems than Joan Miró: from 1948 to 1976, four illustrated books, a dozen or so more modest collaborations, not to mention the ‘illuminated’ manuscripts […]. Miró could never refuse his friends anything, especially when it came to Char, for whom he very quickly developed a complete, if silent, admiration. […] This relationship, though lacking in apparent dialogue, was no less profound. They both enjoyed working together: Miró was a true reader of poetry, and Char wrote—in 1963—his most elaborate text on art regarding Miró’s work, describing it as a “gravitation toward the sources,” “the first spark in the childhood of time.” We find this playful joy in almost all the books or manuscripts to which the painter was invited” (Antoine Coron). Mir took two years to complete the engravings for the plates of *Le Marteau sans maître*. (Coron, René Char, BnF, 2007, p. 178 and no. 295.—Cramer, Joan Mir. Les livres illustrés, no. 216.—Dupin, MirEngraver, IV, 944–966.)