When Miró was asked by fellow artist Jean Arp (1887-1966) if he would like to join a group of abstractionists, his refusal was revealing, 'For me a form is never something absurd, it is always a sign of something. It is always a man, a bird or something else ...' One of a series of etchings inspired by a new phase of experimentation at the Atelier 17 workshop run by Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988), Miró here reduces a human presence to a spontaneous piece of calligraphy.