Joan Miró (April 20, 1893 – December 25, 1983), Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramist, was born in Barcelona, Spain. Miró is famous for his paintings Catalan Landscape, Maternity, Harlequin's Carnival and Motherhood.
The son of a goldsmith and clockmaker, he discovered his drawing talent at an early age. At 14, he enrolled in a business college at the same time pursued courses at the La Lonja's Escuela Superior de Artes Industriales y Bellas Artes (Lonja School of Fine Arts) in Barcelona.
Miró's Early Years
Miró was employed as a bookkeeper in 1910, but suffered from a nervous breakdown. He spent time convalescing at his parents' farm near Montroig in Catalonia, a place where he got one of his greatest sources of inspiration. Two years later, he decided to devote fulltime to painting and attended the Francisco Gali Academy in Barcelona.
The Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona held an exhibition of Impressionists, Fauvists and Cubists, followed by Vollard's vast exhibition of French art in the city. These influences are evident in Miro's work between 1916 and 1919. He came to know various Catalan artists during this time, including the ceramic artist Llorens Artigas. Before World War I, he painted in Cézannesque and Fauve styles and had great admiration for primitive Catalan art and the Art Nouveau forms.
Miró and Surrealism
When Miró went to Paris for the first time, he met Pablo Picasso. He studied in Paris and Barcelona. Surrealism movement, best known for its visual artworks, also started this time. Miró divided his time between Paris (winter) and Montroig (summer), participated in Dada activities and associated with the prominent writers and poets. Picasso and Salvador Dali were influential during the years Miró was also developing his own style. His studio neighbour in Rue Blomet was French artist Andre Masson. In the mid-1920s he developed an abstract style, some linear and some highly colored, generally floating on a plain background.
His works include Catalan Landscape (1923-1924) and Maternity (1924). He also designed ballet sets, sculptures, murals, and tapestries. In 1925 he exhibited some of his works with the Surrealists. The time he spent with writers and artists belonging to the Surrealist movement confirmed Miró in his transition towards surrealism. He invented a manner of painting using curvilinear and fantastical forms suggesting dreamlike situations. He distinguished his uniqueness in his own motifs and vivid colors, for example, in Harlequin's Carnival, however, Motherhood with its exemplary economy of subtle mechanism of its sexual symbolism brought him well into his Surrealist period (1925-1927).
During the 1930s his style became more sober, but after WWII he produced even larger abstracts. He also experimented with sculpture and printmaking. He produced ceramic murals, including two in the UNESCO building, Paris (1958). Eventually, these pictures became almost entirely abstract and had a great influence on American Abstract Expressionist artists in the late1940s and 1950s.
He designed stained glass and sets for the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev.
Ceramics continued to preoccupy the artist in him, painting together with sculptures; he painted marble and bronzes. On occasions he designed settings for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes ballet: Romeo and Juliet in collaboration with Max Ernst; and for Massine's Jeux d'enfantes (1932)
He produced tapestry cartoons, while his engravings (etchings, wood engravings and lithographs) were exhibited in Paris, 1974.
Miró's Legacy
Joan Miró died in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, December 25, 1983.
His work was of exceptional diversity. Freedom of interpretation, allied to a continuing search for fresh sources of inspiration gave substance throughout his career, exemplary among modern artists.
He received several awards, including the Venice Biennale printmaking prize (1954), Guggenheim International Award (1959) and Gold Medal of fine Arts from King Juan Carlos of Spain (1980).
Joan Miró's works are primarily found in Miró Foundation, Barcelona; Palma Majorca. It is a museum of modern art built in Montjuic, Barcelona completed by architect Josep Lluís Sert. It houses hundreds of his canvases, also lithographs and sculptures.
