Tres Aiguaforts was Tàpies first collaboration with the poet Joan Brossa, with whom the artist would go on to produce numerous livre d'artiste over the next three decades. It was also one of the artist's earliest forays into the artist's book. While his later productions were characterised by their playful deconstruction of text and image, the format of Tres Aiguaforts is traditional, featuringa brief surrealist text by Brossa in elegant letterpress, accompanied by three small etchings printed with selectively wiped tone and monotype handcolouring. Depicting an idiosyncratic melay of eyes, checkerboards, pyramids, and twisting, anthropomorphic vegetation, the etchings reflect the formative influences of Paul Klee and Joan Miró, and are a quintessential example of the artist's brief surrealist phase.

Copies of Tres Aiguaforts are of great rarity. Of the seven printed, two are in public collections (MACBA, Barcelona; Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona). To our knowledge no other examples have been offered at auction in the last thirty years.
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