Biography of Joan Miro - BLOUIN ARTINFO, The Premier Global Online Destination for Art and Culture | BLOUIN ARTINFO “Hands flying off towards the constellations,” 1974 Education: Escuela Superior de Artes Industriales y Bellas Artes, Barcelona; Escola d’Art, Barcelona Joan Miró was an influential Spanish artist of the 20th century who famously rejected traditional methods of painting. His work has long been categorized as Surrealist, a free expression of the subconscious mind. Miró was a painter, sculptor and ceramicist. Early Life and Work Born in Barcelona in the Catalonia region of Spain on April 20, 1893, he began studying at La Lonja’s Escuela Superior de Artes Industriales y Bellas Artes in Barcelona in 1907. At the same time, Miró enrolled in business school as his father, a watchmaker, and mother, a goldsmith, wanted him to have a stable vocation. Miró worked as a clerk for nearly two years after completing school, however, he decided to give up the business world and devote himself to art after suffering a nervous breakdown.

He enrolled at Francesc Galí’s Escola d’Art in Barcelona from 1912 to 1915 to continue his education. Encouraged by the art dealer José Dalmau, Miró presented his first exhibition in 1918 at the Dalmau Galleries in Barcelona. Miró’s early works showcase an impressive range of stylistic influences—the vivid colors of Fauvism, fractured forms of Cubist perspective, the flatness of the Catalan folk art and Spanish Romanesque frescoes and 17th century Dutch Realism. Experimentation and Transformation Miró made his first trip to Paris in 1920 and by 1921, he had moved permanently to the city. He quickly became a denizen of the artistic community in Montparnasse, where association with Surrealist poets and writers of the day became crucial in the development of his mature style. His first solo exhibition in Paris, organized by Dalmau, was held in 1921 at La Licorne Gallery. In 1928, Miró was part of an exhibition by Surrealist painters in Paris.

In spite of his personal and professional associations, Miró retained his individuality in style and ideology and experimented with new forms throughout his career. By the late 1920s, Miró’s work took a new turn when he began to experiment with collages, lithographs and sculptures. His Surrealist sculptures included painted stones and found objects. Drawing on themes of memory, fantasy, and irrationality, Miró produced paintings that could be described as the visual manifestations of Surrealist poetry—reveries with a sense of humor, depictions of warped animals, twisted organic forms and bizarre geometric assemblages. Typically, works by Miró during this period featured amorphous shapes interspersed with clusters of lines, dots, and squiggles. Miró exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, in 1936 and in 1937, he was commissioned to create a monumental work for the Paris World Fair. He created an anti-war mural called “The Reaper” which was 5.5 meters high. A retrospective of Miró’s work was held at the MoMA in New York in 1941.

During World War II, Miró fled France and moved back to Spain. He undertook a series of 23 gouaches that comprised images of birds, women and the moon—themes he would continue to revisit for the rest of his career—titled “Constellations,” earning him the praise of Andre Bréton, the father of Surrealism. Miró continued to produce ethereal works, gradually whittling his figures into biomorphic abstractions and streaks of color. The artist also continued his experiments with etchings and lithography, producing two large-scale ceramic murals installed at the UNESCO building in Paris, titled “Wall of the Moon” and “Wall of the Sun,”(1957–59). The late 1960s marked the onset of his final artistic period. During this time, Miró focused on public art works, developing monumental pieces for public display. In particular, he felt the influence of the French Art Informel movement, distinguished by the attention to bodily language and eschewing of representational form. Recognition Miró was awarded the Grand Prize for Graphic Work at the Venice Biennale in 1954 and the Guggenheim International Award in 1958.

Retrospectives of his work took place at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1962, and the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1974. In 1978 the Musée National d’Art Moderne held another major retrospective of his drawings, exhibiting over 500 works. In 1976, the Joan Miró Foundation Center of Contemporary Art Study opened in Barcelona. Three years later, the University of Barcelona named the legendary artist Doctor Honoris Causa. Miró died in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, on December 25, 1983. Timeline 1893 - Born in Barcelona in the Catalonia region of Spain 1907 - Begins studying at La Lonja’s Escuela Superior de Artes Industriales y Bellas Artes in Barcelona 1912 - Enrolls at Francesc Galí’s Escola d’Art in Barcelona 1918 - Presents his first exhibition at the Dalmau Galleries in Barcelona.

1921 - Moves to Paris Joan Miró Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works | The Art Story Web Services & Hosting by The Computer Studio | Designed by DesArtLab Realism Realism Realism is an approach to art that stresses the naturalistic representation of things, the look of objects and figures in ordinary life. It emerged as a distinct movement in the mid-nineteenth century, in opposition to the idealistic, sometimes mythical subjects that were then popular, but it can be traced back to sixteenth-century Dutch art and forward into twentieth-century styles such as Social Realism. Fauvism Fauvism Fauvism was an early twentieth-century art movement founded by Henri Matisse and André Derain. Labeled as "wild beasts", Fauve artists favored vibrant colors and winding gestural strokes across the canvas. Cubism Cubism Cubism was developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907-1911, and it continued to be highly influential long after its decline.

This classic phase has two stages: 'Analytic', in which forms seem to be 'analyzed' and fragmented; and 'Synthetic', in which pre-existing materials such as newspaper and wood veneer are collaged to the surface of the canvas. Surrealism Surrealism Perhaps the most influential avant-garde movement of the century, Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 by a small group of writers and artists who sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. Much influenced by Freud, they believed that the conscious mind repressed the power of the imagination. Influenced also by Marx, they hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in the everyday world and spur on revolution. André Breton André Breton André Breton, author of the 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, was an influential theorizer of both Dada and Surrealism. Born in France, he emigrated to New York during World War II, where he greatly influenced the Abstract Expressionists.

Color Field Painting Color Field Painting A tendency within Abstract Expressionism, distinct from gestural abstraction, Color Field painting was developed by Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still in the late 1940s, and developed further by Helen Frankenthaler and others. It is characterized by large fields of color and an absence of any figurative motifs, and often expresses a yearning for transcendence and the infinite. Dada Dada Dada was an artistic and literary movement that emerged in 1916. It arose in reaction to World War I, and the nationalism and rationalism that many thought had led to the War. Influenced by several avant-gardes - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism - its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting and collage. Emerging first in Zurich, it spread to cities including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York and Cologne. Max Ernst Max Ernst Max Ernst was a German Dadaist and Surrealist whose paintings and collages combine dream-like realism, automatic techniques, and eerie subject matter.

Sergei Diaghilev Sergei Diaghilev Sergei Diaghilev was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would rise. The end of the nineteenth century brought changes in harmonic and metric devices. They became either more rigid, or much more unpredictable, and each approach had a liberating effect on rhythm, which also affected ballet. Diaghilev was a pioneer in adapting these new musical styles to modern ballet. Abstract Expressionism Abstract Expressionism A tendency among New York painters of the late 1940s and '50s, all of whom were committed to an expressive art of profound emotion and universal themes. The movement embraced the gestural abstraction of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, and the color field painting of Mark Rothko and others. It blended elements of Surrealism and abstract art in an effort to create a new style fitted to the postwar mood of anxiety and trauma. Salvador Dalí Salvador Dalí Salvador Dalí was a Spanish Surrealist painter who combined a hyperrealist style with dream-like, sexualized subject matter.

His collaborations with Hollywood and commercial ventures, alongside his notoriously dramatic personality, earned him scorn from some Surrealist colleagues. Enrique Tabara Enrique Tabara Luis Enrique Tábara was born in 1930, Guayaquil, Ecuador. He is a master painter and teacher representing a whole Hispanic pictorial and artistic culture. Tábara investigates and demystifies the image in which he takes refuge. His energetic and innovating spirit is a constant that reveals the anxious and versatile spirit of the teacher. A master of experimentation, he is fully aware of his roots and the process that he has followed over the years, with an abundant mass of brilliant works to show for it. Eugenio Granell Eugenio Granell Eugenio Granell, 1912-2001, was an artist often described as the last Spanish Surrealist painter. Playfulness, advocated by the surrealists as an expression of freedom, pervades the whole of this artist's work. Granell's dialogue and writing have always ironically mocked solemnity and reason itself. Such are his painting, his sculpture and his readymades: an extremely beautiful elegy to freedom and the purity of feelings.

In 1959, André Breton organized an exhibit called The Homage to Surrealism Exhibition to celebrate the Fortieth Anniversary of Surrealism which exhibited works by Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Enrique Tábara and Eugenio Granell. Hans Arp Hans Arp Hans Arp (also known as Jean Arp) was a German-French artist who incorporated chance, randomness, and organic forms into his sculptures, paintings, and collages. He was involved with Zurich Dada, Surrealism, and the Abstraction-Creation movement. Yves Tanguy Yves Tanguy Yves Tanguy was a French painter and one of the key figures of French Surrealism in the early twentieth century. Having never received any formal training, Tanguy was a self-taught painter who became best known for his highly imaginitive landscapes and detailed precision. Robert Motherwell Robert Motherwell Robert Motherwell was a first-generation Abstract Expressionist whose paintings use hulking shapes, large-scale strokes and calligraphy, and wide expanses of muted color. Eloquent and well-educated, he wrote extensively on theories of art.

Arshile Gorky Arshile Gorky Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter and a major influence on the development of Abstract Expressionism. In his own art he fused elements of Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism, and was close with key figures central to New York's burgeoning abstrct art scene, such as John Graham, Stuart Davis and Willem de Kooning. Jackson Pollock Jackson Pollock Jackson Pollock was the most well-known Abstract Expressionist and the key example of Action Painting. His work ranges from Jungian scenes of primitive rites to the purely abstract "drip paintings" of his later career. Mark Rothko Mark Rothko Mark Rothko was an Abstract Expressionist painter whose early interest in mythic landscapes gave way to mature works featuring large, hovering blocks of color on colored grounds. Alexander Calder Alexander Calder Alexander Calder was an American artist who made important contributions to abstract sculpture, hanging mobiles, and Kinetic art. His work reflects both modern and Surrealist influences.

Paul Rand Paul Rand Paul Rand, 1914-1996, was an American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Enron, Westinghouse, ABC, and Steve Jobs' NeXT. Steve Jobs was pleased: just prior to Rand's death in 1996, his former client labeled him, simply, "the greatest living graphic designer." Although his logos may be interpreted as simplistic, Rand was quick to point out in A Designer's Art that "ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting." Rand taught design at Yale University, and was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972. Lucienne Day Lucienne Day Désirée Lucienne Day, 1917-2010, was a British textile designer. Inspired by abstract art, she pioneered the use of bright, optimistic, abstract patterns in post-war England, and was eventually celebrated worldwide. Day's work combined organic shapes with bright patterns inspired by contemporary abstract painters such as Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miró . She believed that good design should be affordable.

In the 1970s, Day ceased to design mass production fabrics, turning instead to creating what she called "mosaics": large tapestries made of thousands of pieces of Thai and Indian silk. They currently hang in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, and the coffee shop of a John Lewis store in Kingston upon Thames. Julian Hatton Julian Hatton Julian Burroughs Hatton III is an American landscape abstract artist from New York City whose paintings have appeared in galleries in the United States and France. The New York Times described his painting style as "vibrant, playful, semi-abstract landscapes" while New York Sun art critic John Goodrich compared him to French painter Bonnard. Hatton's abstract landscapes have been compared to paintings by Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keeffe because of his "unbridled love of pure, hot color" similar to Gaughin and the Fauves, according to critic Ann Landi of ARTnews. Hatton lives and works in New York City. Marc Chagall Marc Chagall Marc Chagall was a Russian-born, Jewish-French artist that reached great popularity during the twentieth century.

Although his art is associated with several movements, Chagall is commonly grouped in with the German Expressionists. Much of his early work was credited with synthesizing visual elements of Cubism, Symbolism and Fauvism. Vincent van Gogh Vincent van Gogh Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch painter, commonly associated with the Post-Impressionist period. As one of the most prolific and experimental artists of his time, van Gogh was a spontaneous painter and a master of color and perspective. Troubled by personal demons all his life, many historians speculate that van Gogh suffered from a Bipolar disorder. Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Kandinsky A member of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, and later a teacher at the Bauhaus, Kandinsky is best known for his pioneering breakthrough into expressive abstraction in 1913. His work prefigures that of the American Abstract Expressionists. André Masson André Masson André Masson was a French painter and one of the pioneers of Surrealism. His practice of "automatic drawing" consisted of methodically supressing his conscious mind while creating art, thus allowing Masson to work from his subconscious.

He was also known to work after long periods of forced hunger and sleep deprivation, resulting in quasi-hallucinatory images. Francis Picabia Francis Picabia Francis Picabia was a French artist who worked in Dada, Surrealist, and abstract modes, often employing language and mechanical imagery. He published the Dada journal 391 in Barcelona and America. Expressionism Expressionism Expressionism is a broad term for a host of movements in early twentieth-century Germany and beyond, from Die Brücke (1905) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911) to the early Neue Sachlichkeit painters in the 1920s and '30s. Many Expressionists used vivid colors and abstracted forms to create spiritually or psychologically intense works, while others focused on depictions of war, alienation, and the modern city. Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract painter in mid-twentieth-century New York. Along with Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, Frankenthaler is considered a pioneer in the practice of Color Field painting.

Joan Miró on ArtStack - art online 1980 Gold Medal of Fine Arts, Spain Joan Miró i Ferrà ( Catalan: [ʒuˈan miˈɾo] ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Spanish painter , sculptor , and ceramicist born in Barcelona . A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró , was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró , was established in his adoptive city of Palma de Mallorca in 1981. Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism , a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and famously declared an "assassination of painting" in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

[1] Contents Biography[ edit ] Born into the family of a goldsmith and a watchmaker, Miró grew up in the Barri Gòtic neighborhood of Barcelona. [2] His father was Miquel Miró Adzerias and his mother was Dolors Ferrà. [3] He began drawing classes at the age of seven at a private school at Carrer del Regomir 13, a medieval mansion. In 1907 he enrolled at the fine art academy at La Llotja , to the dismay of his father. He studied at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc [4] and he had his first solo show in 1918 at the Dalmau Gallery, where his work was ridiculed and defaced. [5] Inspired by Cubist and surrealist exhibitions from abroad, Miró was drawn towards the arts community that was gathering in Montparnasse and in 1920 moved to Paris , but continued to spend his summers in Catalonia .

[2] Career[ edit ] Joan Miró, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower, 1920, oil on canvas, 82.6 x 74.9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art Miró initially went to business school as well as art school. He began his working career when he was a teenager as a clerk, although he abandoned the business world completely for art after suffering a nervous breakdown. [6] His early art, like that of the similarly influenced Fauves and Cubists exhibited in Barcelona, was inspired by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne . The resemblance of Miró's work to that of the intermediate generation of the avant-garde has led scholars to dub this period his Catalan Fauvist period. [7] A few years after Miró’s 1918 Barcelona solo exhibition, he settled in Paris where he finished a number of paintings that he had begun on his parents’ summer home and farm in Mont-roig del Camp . One such painting, The Farm , showed a transition to a more individual style of painting and certain nationalistic qualities.

Ernest Hemingway , who later purchased the piece, compared the artistic accomplishment to James Joyce’s Ulysses and described it by saying, “It has in it all that you feel about Spain when you are there and all that you feel when you are away and cannot go there. No one else has been able to paint these two very opposing things.” [8] Miró annually returned to Mont-roig and developed a symbolism and nationalism that would stick with him throughout his career. Two of Miró’s first works classified as Surrealist, Catalan Landscape (The Hunter) [ citation needed ] and The Tilled Field , [9] employ the symbolic language that was to dominate the art of the next decade.[ citation needed ] In 1924, Miró joined the Surrealist group. The already symbolic and poetic nature of Miró’s work, as well as the dualities and contradictions inherent to it, fit well within the context of dream-like automatism espoused by the group. Much of Miró’s work lost the cluttered chaotic lack of focus that had defined his work thus far, and he experimented with collage and the process of painting within his work so as to reject the framing that traditional painting provided.

This antagonistic attitude towards painting manifested itself when Miró referred to his work in 1924 ambiguously as “x” in a letter to poet friend Michel Leiris . [10] The paintings that came out of this period were eventually dubbed Miró’s dream paintings. Miró did not completely abandon subject matter. Despite the Surrealist automatic techniques that he employed extensively in the 1920s, sketches show that his work was often the result of a methodical process. Miró’s work rarely dipped into non-objectivity, maintaining a symbolic, schematic language. This was perhaps most prominent in the repeated Head of a Catalan Peasant series of 1924 to 1925. In 1926, he collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev . With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered the technique of grattage , in which he troweled pigment onto his canvases.[ citation needed ] Miró returned to a more representational form of painting with The Dutch Interiors of 1928.

Crafted after works by Hendrik Martenszoon Sorgh and Jan Steen seen as postcard reproductions, the paintings reveal the influence of a trip to Holland taken by the artist. [11] These paintings share more in common with Tilled Field or Harlequin’s Carnival than with the minimalistic dream paintings produced a few years earlier. Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma ( Majorca ) on 12 October 1929; their daughter, María Dolores Miró, was born 17 July 1930. In 1931, Pierre Matisse opened an art gallery in New York City . The Pierre Matisse Gallery (which existed until Matisse's death in 1989) became an influential part of the Modern art movement in America. From the outset Matisse represented Joan Miró and introduced his work to the United States market by frequently exhibiting Miró's work in New York. [12] [13] Until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War , Miró habitually returned to Spain in the summers. Once the war began, he was unable to return home.

Unlike many of his surrealist contemporaries, Miró had previously preferred to stay away from explicitly political commentary in his work. Though a sense of (Catalan) nationalism pervaded his earliest surreal landscapes and Head of a Catalan Peasant, it wasn’t until Spain’s Republican government commissioned him to paint the mural, The Reaper , for the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exhibition , that Miró’s work took on a politically charged meaning. [14] In 1939, with Germany’s invasion of France looming, Miró relocated to Varengeville in Normandy, and on 20 May of the following year, as Germans invaded Paris, he narrowly fled to Spain (now controlled by Francisco Franco) for the duration of the Vichy Regime’s rule. [15] In Varengeville, Palma, and Mont-roig, between 1940 and 1941, Miró created the twenty-three gouache series Constellations . Revolving around celestial symbolism, Constellations earned the artist praise from André Breton , who seventeen years later wrote a series of poems, named after and inspired by Miró's series.

[16] Features of this work revealed a shifting focus to the subjects of women, birds, and the moon, which would dominate his iconography for much of the rest of his career. Joan Miró, Blue I, Blue II , and Blue III triptych, 1961, here depicted on exhibit at the Centre Pompidou-Metz museum, Metz, France, in October 2010. [17] Shuzo Takiguchi published the first monograph on Miró in 1940. In 1948–49 Miró lived in Barcelona and made frequent visits to Paris to work on printing techniques at the Mourlot Studios and the Atelier Lacourière . He developed a close relationship with Fernand Mourlot and that resulted in the production of over one thousand different lithographic editions. In 1959, André Breton asked Miró to represent Spain in The Homage to Surrealism exhibition alongside Enrique Tábara , Salvador Dalí , and Eugenio Granell .

Miró created a series of sculptures and ceramics for the garden of the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence , France, which was completed in 1964. In 1974, Miró created a tapestry for the World Trade Center in New York City together with the Catalan artist Josep Royo . He had initially refused to do a tapestry, then he learned the craft from Royo and the two artists produced several works together. His World Trade Center Tapestry was displayed at the building [18] and was one of the most expensive works of art lost during the September 11 attacks . [19] [20] In 1977, Miró and Royo finished a tapestry to be exhibited in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. [21] [22] In 1981, Miró's The Sun, the Moon and One Star—later renamed Miró's Chicago —was unveiled. This large, mixed media sculpture is situated outdoors in the downtown Loop area of Chicago , across the street from another large public sculpture, the Chicago Picasso .

Miró had created a bronze model of The Sun, the Moon and One Star in 1967. The maquette now resides in the Milwaukee Art Museum . Late life and death[ edit ] In 1979 Miró received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Barcelona . The artist, who suffered from heart failure, died in his home in Palma ( Majorca ) on December 25, 1983. [23] Early fauvist[ edit ] His early modernist works include Portrait of Vincent Nubiola (1917), Siurana - the Path, Nord-Sud (1917) and Painting of Toledo. These works show the influence of Cézanne , and fill the canvas with a colourful surface and a more painterly treatment than the hard-edge style of most of his later works. In Nord-Sud, the literary newspaper of that name appears in the still life, a compositional device common in cubist compositions, but also a reference to the literary and avant-garde interests of the painter.

[24] Magical realism[ edit ] Starting in 1920, Miró developed a very precise style, picking out every element in isolation and detail and arranging them in deliberate composition. These works, including House with Palm Tree (1918), Nude with a Mirror (1919), Horse, Pipe and Red Flower (1920), and The Table - Still Life with Rabbit (1920), show the clear influence of Cubism , although in a restrained way, being applied to only a proportion of the subject. For example, The Farmer's Wife (1922–23), is realistic, but some sections are stylized or deformed, such as the treatment of the woman's feet, which are enlarged and flattened. [25] The culmination of this style was The Farm (1921–22). The rural Catalan scene it depicts is augmented by an avant-garde French newspaper in the center, showing Miró sees this work transformed by the Modernist theories he had been exposed to in Paris. The concentration on each element as equally important was a key step towards generating a pictorial sign for each element.

The background is rendered in flat or patterned in simple areas, highlighting the separation of figure and ground, which would become important in his mature style. Miró made many attempts to promote this work, but his surrealist colleagues found it too realistic and apparently conventional, and so he soon turned to a more explicitly surrealist approach. [26] Early surrealism[ edit ] In 1922, Miró explored abstracted, strongly coloured surrealism in at least one painting. [27] From the summer of 1923 in Mont-roig, Miró began a key set of paintings where abstracted pictorial signs, rather than the realistic representations used in The Farm, are predominant. In The Tilled Field, Catalan Landscape (The Hunter) and Pastoral (1923–24), these flat shapes and lines (mostly black or strongly coloured) suggest the subjects, sometimes quite cryptically. For Catalan Landscape (The Hunter), Miró represents the hunter with a combination of signs: a triangle for the head, curved lines for the moustache, angular lines for the body. So encoded is this work that at a later time Miró provided a precise explanation of the signs used.

[28] Surrealist pictorial language[ edit ] Through the mid-1920s Miró developed the pictorial sign language which would be central throughout the rest of his career. In Harlequin's Carnival (1924–25), there is a clear continuation of the line begun with The Tilled Field. But in subsequent works, such as The Happiness of Loving My Brunette (1925) and Painting (Fratellini) (1927), there are far fewer foreground figures, and those that remain are simplified. Soon after Miró also began his Spanish Dancer series of works. These simple collages, were like a conceptual counterpoint to his paintings. In Spanish Dancer (1928) he combines a cork, a feather and a hatpin onto a blank sheet of paper. [26] Livres d'Artiste[ edit ] Miró created over 250 illustrated books.

[29] These were known as " Livres d' Artiste ." One such work was published in 1974, at the urging of the widow of the French poet Robert Desnos , titled "Les pénalités de l'enfer ou les nouvelles Hébrides" ("The Penalties of Hell or The New Hebrides"). It was a set of 25 lithographs, five in black, and the others in colors. In 2006 the book was displayed in "Joan Miró, Illustrated Books" at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. One critic said it is "an especially powerful set, not only for the rich imagery but also for the story behind the book's creation. The lithographs are long, narrow verticals, and while they feature Miró's familiar shapes, there's an unusual emphasis on texture." The critic continued, "I was instantly attracted to these four prints, to an emotional lushness, that's in contrast with the cool surfaces of so much of Miró's work. Their poignancy is even greater, I think, when you read how they came to be.

The artist met and became friends with Desnos, perhaps the most beloved and influential surrealist writer, in 1925, and before long, they made plans to collaborate on a livre d'artiste. Those plans were put on hold because of the Spanish Civil War and World War II . Desnos' bold criticism of the latter led to his imprisonment in Auschwitz , and he died at age 45 shortly after his release in 1945. Nearly three decades later, at the suggestion of Desnos' widow, Miró set out to illustrate the poet's manuscript. It was his first work in prose, which was written in Morocco in 1922 but remained unpublished until this posthumous collaboration." Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation in Palma de Mallorca . Pictured is Miró's former workshop, built by Josep Lluís Sert . Styles and development[ edit ] In Paris, under the influence of poets and writers, he developed his unique style: organic forms and flattened picture planes drawn with a sharp line.

Generally thought of as a Surrealist because of his interest in automatism and the use of sexual symbols (for example, ovoids with wavy lines emanating from them), Miró's style was influenced in varying degrees by Surrealism and Dada , [6] yet he rejected membership in any artistic movement in the interwar European years. André Breton described him as "the most Surrealist of us all." Miró confessed to creating one of his most famous works, Harlequin's Carnival, under similar circumstances: How did I think up my drawings and my ideas for painting? Well I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling... [30] Miró's surrealist origins evolved out of "repression" much like all Spanish surrealist and magic realist work, especially because of his Catalan ethnicity, which was subject to special persecution by the Franco regime. Also, Joan Miró was well aware of Haitian Voodoo art and Cuban Santería religion through his travels before going into exile.

This led to his signature style of art making.[ citation needed ] Experimental style[ edit ] Joan Miró was among the first artists to develop automatic drawing as a way to undo previous established techniques in painting, and thus, with André Masson , represented the beginning of Surrealism as an art movement.[ by whom? ] However, Miró chose not to become an official member of the Surrealists in order to be free to experiment with other artistic styles without compromising his position within the group. He pursued his own interests in the art world, ranging from automatic drawing and surrealism , to expressionism , Lyrical Abstraction , and Color Field painting . Four-dimensional painting was a theoretical type of painting Miró proposed in which painting would transcend its two-dimensionality and even the three-dimensionality of sculpture .[ citation needed ] Miró's oft-quoted interest in the assassination of painting is derived from a dislike of bourgeois art, which he believed was used as a way to promote propaganda and cultural identity among the wealthy. Specifically, Miró responded to Cubism in this way, which by the time of his quote had become an established art form in France.

He is quoted as saying "I will break their guitar," referring to Picasso's paintings, with the intent to attack the popularity and appropriation of Picasso's art by politics. [31] The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I'm overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains - everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me. —Joan Miró, 1958, quoted in Twentieth-Century Artists on Art In an interview with biographer Walter Erben , Miró expressed his dislike for art critics , saying, they "are more concerned with being philosophers than anything else. They form a preconceived opinion, then they look at the work of art. Painting merely serves as a cloak in which to wrap their emaciated philosophical systems."[ citation needed ] In the final decades of his life Miró accelerated his work in different media, producing hundreds of ceramics, including the Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun at the UNESCO building in Paris. He also made temporary window paintings (on glass) for an exhibit.

In the last years of his life Miró wrote his most radical and least known ideas, exploring the possibilities of gas sculpture and four-dimensional painting. Exhibitions[ edit ] Throughout the 1960s, Miró was a featured artist in many salon shows assembled by the Maeght Foundation that also included works by Marc Chagall , Giacometti , Brach, Cesar, Ubac , and Tal-Coat . The large retrospectives devoted to Miró in his old age in towns such as New York (1972), London (1972), Saint-Paul-de-Vence (1973) and Paris (1974) were a good indication of the international acclaim that had grown steadily over the previous half-century; further major retrospectives took place posthumously. Political changes in his native country led in 1978 to the first full exhibition of his painting and graphic work, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.

In 1993, the year of the hundredth anniversary of his birth, several exhibitions were held, among which the most prominent were those held in the Fundació Joan Miró , Barcelona, the Museum of Modern Art , New York, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía , Madrid, and the Galerie Lelong, Paris. [32] In 2011, another retrospective was mounted by the Tate Modern , London, and travelled to Fundació Joan Miró and the National Gallery of Art , Washington, D.C.. Joan Miró, Printmaking, Fundación Joan Miró (2013). And two exhibitions in 2014, Miró: From Earth to Sky at Albertina Museum, and Masterpieces from the Kunsthaus Zürich, National Art Center, Tokyo.

Exhibitions entitled Joan Miró: Instinct & Imagination and "Miró: The Experience of Seeing" were held at the Denver Art Museum from 22 March – 28 June 2015 and at the McNay Art Museum from 30 September 2015 - 10 January 2016 (respectively), showing works made by Miró between 1963 and 1981, on loan from the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] Legacy and influence[ edit ] Recognition[ edit ] In 1954 he was given the Venice Biennale print making prize, in 1958 the Guggenheim International Award, [6] [43] In 1981, the Palma City Council ( Majorca ) established the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca, housed in the four studios that Miró had donated for the purpose.

[44] Art market[ edit ] Today, Miró's paintings sell for between US$250,000 and US$26 million; US$17 million at a U.S. auction for the La Caresse des étoiles (1938) on 6 May 2008, at the time the highest amount paid for one of his works. [45] In 2012, Painting-Poem ("le corps de ma brune puisque je l'aime comme ma chatte habillée en vert salade comme de la grêle c'est pareil") (1925) was sold at Christie's London for $26.6 million. [46] Later that year at Sotheby's in London, Peinture (Etoile Bleue) (1927) brought nearly 23.6 million pounds with fees, more than twice what it had sold for at a Paris auction in 2007 and a record price for the artist at auction.

[47] [48] Joan Miro Biography | Joan Miro Art Joan Miro Biography Tweet Joan Miró i Ferrà (April 20,1893 – December 25,1983) was a world renowned Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramist who was born in the sea port city of Barcelona. Miro was the son of a watchmaking father and a goldsmith mother, he was exposed to the arts from a very young age. There have been some drwaings recovered by Miro dating to 1901, when he was only 8 years old. Miro enrolled at the School of Industrial and Fine Arts in Barcelona until 1910; during his attendance he was taught by Modest Urgell and Josep Pascó. After overcoming a serious bout of typhoid fever in 1911, Miro decided to devote his life entirely to painting by attending the school of art taught by Francesc Galí. He studied at La Lonja School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and in 1918 set up his first individual exhibition in the Dalmau Galleries, in the same city.

His works before 1920 (the date of his first trip to Paris) reflect the influence of different trends, like the pure and brilliant colors used in Fauvism, shapes taken from cubism, influences from folkloric Catalan art and Roman frescos from the churches. His trip to Paris introduced him to and developed his trend of surrealist painting. In 1921, he showed his first individual exhibition in Paris, at La Licorne Gallery. In 1928, he exhibited with a group of surrealists in the Pierre Gallery, also in Paris, although Miró was always to maintain his independent qualities with respect to groups and ideologies. From 1929-1930, Miró began to take interest in the object as such, in the form of collages. This was a practice which was to lead to his making of surrealist sculptures. His tormented monsters appeared during this decade, which gave way to the consolidation of his plastic vocabulary. He also experimented with many other artistic forms, such as engraving, lithography, water colors, pastels, and painting over copper.

What is particularly highlighted from this period, are the two ceramic murals which he made for the UNESCO building in Paris (The Wall of the Moon and the Wall of the Sun, 1957-59). Joan Miro UNESCO Mural- “The Moon and The Sun” It was at the end of the 60´s when his final period was marked and which lasted until his death. During this time, he concentrated more and more on monumental and public works. He was characterized by the body language and freshness with which he carried out his canvasses, as well as the special attention he paid to material and the stamp he received from informalism. He concentrated his interest on the symbol, not giving too much importance to the representing theme, but to the way the symbol emerged as the piece of work. Miro had a very eccentric style that is the embodiment of his unique approach to his artwork. In 1976 the Joan Miró Foundation Centre of Contemporary Art Study was officially opened in the city of Barcelona and in 1979, four years before his death, he was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Barcelona.

Artist Profile of Joan Miro - His Life and Work Artist Profile: Joan Miro (Note: There should be an accent over the 'o' in Miro) Joan Miro Ferra was an influential 20th century painter, sculptor, ceramicist and printmaker, who was born in 1893 in the Catalan region of Spain, near Barcelona. He began drawing as a young boy, and later attended a business school, as well as La Lonja School of Fine Arts. At the latter school, he was encouraged by two teachers; one encouraged him to revive the spirit of primitive Catalan art, combining it with modern discoveries and techniques. (This was in the beginning of the 20th century, at the time modern art was just beginning in Europe, and the creative climate was energetic and progressive.) As a youth he was exposed to the rich folklore of Catalonia, which later influenced his images, such as how he saw all natural forms as beings, including pebbles and trees. He was also exposed to complete interiors of ninth to twelfth century fescoed churches in visits to the Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona, with their relatively crude execution and their simple, flat and cartoon-like imagery.

They also used primary colors, all heavily outlined in black, with a darkly shaded surrounding field, as well as the also modern treatment of space as a flat surface rather than the traditional illusion of depth in an image (perspective, etc.). All of these elements can be seen in Miro's work, as well as the use of differences of scale, where one form is disproportionately larger than others, a method often used by children when they make the objects most important to them the biggest objects in the image. After 3 years of business school, Miro took a job as an accounting clerk in a drugstore, which was the type of position his parents chose for him. He was overworked there, and became seriously ill, verging on a 'nervous breakdown,' followed by a bout of typhoid fever. His parents then took him to their new country farm, Montroig, in a secluded village in Catalonia. The state of his health caused his parents to allow him to do what he most wanted to do - paint. He attended the Academy Gali in Barcelona (a free-spirited academy with the influence of contemporary foreign painters, where there was also interest in literature and music).

There individual expression was encouraged; Miro also learned to draw by the sense of touch alone, rather than by sight. At this time (around 1915), Dada was beginning, and Miro began reading avant garde Surrealist poets such as Apollinaire and Pierre Reverdy. He met Josep Llorens y Artigas, who was to become a lifelong friend, and with whom he was to collaborate in pottery projects in the years to come. Miro was also influenced by Fauvism (specifically Matisse) and Cubism, which started in the early years of the 20th century, and at first painted still lifes. (Spain has a historical tradition of mystical still lifes, which combine commonplace objects with eerie lighting against total blackness.) From 1915 to 1918 he painted nudes, then portraits, then landscapes. At this point he began "geometricizing" the forms, and used colors independently of their local color (like the Fauves, who used bright colors not seen in nature). He also began searching for signs and symbols to represent humans and animals in tension or movement.

His two biggest influences when young had been Cezanne and Van Gogh, as well as other French artists. The Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona was a gathering place for foreign visitors; here Miro met Francis Picabia, a Dadist painter. Miro's work had gone through a period of free expressiveness; he now decided to tighten up somewhat, doing landscapes until 1921-22. His best known work from this period is The Farm , a view of his parents' farm. The work done during this time shows minute details, using the precision of a naive primitive painter. At this time, and all his life, he was influenced by his Catalan heritage, such as the decorated Catalan pottery, and the Catalan murals which were restored in the 1920's, and painted in flat patterns in a folk style. He was also at this time beginning to be influenced by Surrealism (which began in the 1920's), and his work now took on a more spare look (paring down to essentials). In 1919 he took his first trip to Paris, visiting Picasso in his studio.

The painters Francis Picabia, Salvador Dali, Antoni Tapies, and the architect Antoni Gaudi were also born in Catalonia. Although Picasso was born in Malaga, in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was influenced by Catalan art. In Miro's life, there were three important places: Montroig (in Catalonia), Barcelona and Paris. (Catalonia is located in the northeast part of Spain, close to France, and Catalan culture is very close to the culture of the south of France. The Catalan people have always been a very independent people, holding fast to their language and traditions.) One year later, he visited Paris again, meeting Surrealist poets Pierre Reverdy and Tristan Tzara. At this time he attended the first Dada demonstration in Paris. And finally, he moved to Paris, at an exciting time for young artists, who shared a supportive friendship. In 1923, there was a big change in Miro's art, moving toward more sign-like forms (i.e., like hieroglyphs), geometric shapes and an overall rhythm. There was also a move toward a more overall composition, with The Harlequin's Carnival of 1924-25.

This overall type of composition was later used by Jackson Pollock , Robert Motherwell, Arshile Gorky and other modernists; rather than using a focal point such as that used in traditional painting, the composition encompassed the entire picture surface equally in all places. His forms included cats, butterflies, mannequins, and Catalan peasants, and there was visual movement in his images. Surrealism began at this time, with the writer Andre Breton issuing the Surrealist Manifesto. Surrealism was supposed to be a fusion of reality and the dream, a sort-of "super" reality. Breton felt that Miro's work had an innocence and freedom about it. Miro showed his work in Surrealist exhibitions, and was influenced especially by the Surrealist poets, who in their quest to tap the unconscious mind played games like the "exquisite corpse" in order to compose poems. Exquisite corpse was a technique where a dictionary was passed around in a group of poets, who would each choose a word randomly from it. Whatever words came up, they would organize into a poem; this is how the phrase "exquisite corpse" was created.

They also used the techniques of psychic automatism (like free association), and "systematic derangement of senses." Miro and other painters (such as Andre Masson) worked out a way to transfer these techniques to their visual medium, using their dreams and visual free association. Miro painted about 100 paintings from his dreams at this time; this was his most Surrealist period. He also illustrated Surrealist poems in collaborations with poets. Another concept introduced by the Dadaists was the element of chance or accident in art. They would start with a splotch of fluid, then add to it to make a painting. "The painter works like the poet; first the word, then the thought," is a quote that tries to describe how artists and poets may see or think of a concrete image or word, before they have formulated the idea or "symbolism" behind it. At this time, Miro was influenced by the work of Francis Picabia and Giorgio de Chirico.

Although he exhibited with the Surrealists, and was friends with many of them, he never submitted himself totally to their movement, and did not sign the Surrealist Manifesto, perhaps because of the radical political activities of the Surrealists, who were also very interested in the psychological ideas of Freud and Jung. In 1927 and 1928, Miro painted figures derived from Catalan folk art. In 1928 he began painting images based on postcards of some Dutch interiors he had seen in Holland, by such painters as Jan Steen. The images he worked from were crowded with forms; he gradually simplified the forms and stripped the image down greatly, using geometric divisions and curving movements in the compositions. At this time he moved further away from his points of departure, and began using unusual sources, such as a diesel motor, influenced by Surrealist thinking. From 1928 to 1929 he produced a number of collages; in Paris he had moved closer to Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Paul Eluard and Jean Arp, so was influenced more by the work of these Surrealist painters and one poet. Max Ernst in particular is known for his collages.

In Surrealist art there were two tendencies: the representational imagery of Dali and Magritte, and the more abstracted images of Masson and Miro, though both were affected by Surrealist ideas of anti-logic and the subconscious; and Dali's and Magritte's images, though painted in a highly realistic fashion, depict objects and scenes which do not appear in the rational world, such as a train coming through a fireplace into a room, or melting clocks. By 1929, Miro had finished the first phase of his art-making, and he began to question and reappraise his work during the following 10 years, which were a struggle for him, financially and artistically. He began experimenting with materials - doing papiers colles and collages, using pictures of ordinary objects such as household utensils, machines, and real nails, string, etc. This period of experimentation helped him to drop any lingering traditional practices, and eliminate usual habits of working. By using objects of no significance, artists are able to concentrate on the abstract qualities of objects, rather than their associated meanings or emotions, allowing for more formal freedom; the viewer also is less able to attach literal meanings to the images.

These "neutral" subjects with little aesthetic value or significance take the attention away from subject matter and toward the forms and content in the image. After creating these collages, Miro would make a painting of the collage - transferring a flat collage image onto the equally flat canvas. These paintings from the collages are highly refined and strongly graphic images, and even though they contain no identifiable subject matter, the paintings do contain content, or meaning. Although Miro is often characterized as an abstract painter, he himself considered that he was not - he even felt it an insult to call his work abstract, since he claimed that every form in his images was based on something in the external world, just simplified into his characteristic biomorphic shapes and curving lines. In the 1930's, conflict was active around the world, in particular the Spanish Civil War and the beginnings of World War II. Many atrocities occurred during the Spanish Civil War, inflicted by Franco's fascist forces, as depicted by Picasso in his famous Guernica . Although Miro was not a political artist, his forms during this time depict a certain brutality, with distortions and garish color.

He created a mural for the Spanish pavilion at the Paris Exposition of 1937, called The Reaper. In 1940 and '41, he began his well known series of 22 Constellations , which consist of black dots representing stars on a white ground, using gouache and thinned oil on paper. These are very intricate works, with every part of the canvas activated. The carefully placed dots create a 'jumping' or 'dancing' sense of movement, even a "connect the dots" feeling. They remind me of Mondrian's late work of the 1940's, when he discovered American jazz - Broadway Boogie-Woogie of 1947, which has the same visual movement, and a cool, dancing quality of the little squares. However, Miro's work tends toward more of a cosmic awareness - these are stars, rather than just abstracted dots (painted poetry). Miro stayed in Spain during World War II, his work being influenced by the night, music and stars.

His forms became even more abstracted, and he used a number of techniques in his work, for example whenever lines intersected, there was a splash of primary color; when red and black overlap there is yellow. He gave the works evocative titles such as The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers. In 1942 he began his interest in engraving and ceramics (with his friend Artigas, a highly skilled potter), and in 1944 he returned to painting, now adding a calligraphic quality to his images. By now he was beginning to gain international fame, due to his 1941 retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and his presence in the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1947 in Paris, organized by Marcel Duchamp and Andre Breton. That year he was invited to do a mural commission for a hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was 30 feet long. In 1950 and '51 he did another mural for the Graduate Center at Harvard, which consisted of loosely squared blocks of color combined with black lines and small areas of pure color. These elements form cartoonish figures.

(This mural was later replaced by Miro's ceramic mural.) During the 1940's he also painted some "stick figures," and in the 1950's his images contained forms that were almost like primitive pictographs. In his paintings, forms often do not touch the edges of the picture area - most are an even distance away from the edges, with perhaps one small element touching the edge of the canvas at the top or elsewhere. His backgrounds also have become more mottled now, rather than flat areas of paint, which gives the images more of a sense of visual depth. Despite not contacting the edges completely, his forms at this time still manage to have an overall type of composition. He also began painting ceramics during this time. After the War, after having been in seclusion, he spent time with artist friends Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder and Yves Tanguy in New York. He was influenced by his time in America, particularly by life in the City of New York, which consisted of bright lights and a kind of sensory bombardment, sometimes stressful. In 1948 he returned to Paris and had several exhibitions. Some of his works now are carefully composed and executed, and others are deliberately spontaneous and experimental.

In the early 1950's he began to merge these two tendencies in his work, with a painterly background, linear black and white forms, and touches of pure color. During the 1950's he developed a brand new approach, using the painting methods of primitive man, making painted and carved forms. At this time, he had his lifelong dream of a "big studio" made a reality, and he surrounded himself with all of the objects he had collected over years in walks, such as polished stones, driftwood, seashells, horseshoes, farm implements, etc. This also reflected the Surrealist interest in special, magical objects, like talismans. Their simple forms encouraged the simple forms in his work. From 1945 to '50, he had carved small figurs in clay, like primitive fertility goddesses, and simple vases of bird and head forms. Between 1954 and 1960 he produced his greatest ceramic output, with the aid of Josep Llorens y Artigas, who provided technical expertise for his creations.

They had the use of a very large kiln for Miro to bake his increasingly large ceramic forms, which he created in individual parts to be reconnected after firing. They wanted to produce ceramic works which were not simply paintings transferred to ceramic, but in deference to the ceramic medium itself. Their big project was to convert Miro's art objects to the ceramic medium. They started with large stone blocks suggested by natural rock formations in the countryside, then did small pebble and egg forms. They made vases, dishes and bowls, and added forms to these, to produce objects of no practical use. Finally, he created entirely invented forms. They developed a highly refined glazing process, using 3 to 8 firings for each piece. Because of the unpredictability of a kiln, pieces may fall apart or bring unexpected results. The use of the raku method of pottery, baking with a wood fire, produces effects not seen with gas or electric kilns. Miro learned to control these whims of the kiln to a great degree, and there resulted 232 pieces, which he sent to Paris in 1956 for a show at the Galerie Maeght.

The effect of this show in the gallery was powerful, having a strong effect on viewers - his primitive forms standing and sitting throughout, like a paleolithic forest. Miro also produced his first bronze sculpture at this time. In 1955 he was commissioned to decorate UNESCO's new building in Paris; he made a ceramic design in keeping with the building's design. For this project, he and Artigas inspected the cave paintings of Altamira and Romanesque frescoes in the Barcelona Museum, as well as the architect Gaudi's decorations. Miro was awarded the Guggenheim Prize in 1958 for this work. In 1959 he returned to painting again, and his work was now informed by his experiences in other mediums. In 1962 he painted Mural Painting III, an extremely spare image having a solid yellow-orange surface, with two small black dots and three irregular lines, a spare, painterly image. During the 1960's he devoted more time to the mediums of printmaking, ceramics, murals and sculpture. One reason for his interest in these other mediums was that they involved collaborating with other people, rather than the solitary activity of painting.

Also, printmaking's production of many images rather than just one original appealed to him. Miro's influence on the art of the later 20th century is great; some artists who were influenced by him include Robert Motherwell, Alexander Calder, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Roberto Matta, Mark Rothko, and expressive abstract painters. Perhaps the original color field painter was Matisse, and perhaps Miro's use of a large field of color was due to Matisse's influence. Painters who came afterward who use the color field include Helen Frankenthaler, Jules Olitski and Morris Louis. Miro's vast fields of color also introduced the idea of "empty" space being as valuable as occupied space in painting. Here is a 1958 Miro quote from Twentieth-Century Artists on Art: "The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I'm overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces.

Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains - everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me." His characteristic biomorphic form was also influential in 20th century abstraction, with Alexander Calder and others. Miro had a unique place between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, influencing the New York School of painters in the 1940's and '50's. Throughout his life, Miro worked in several printmaking processes, including engraving, lithography and etching, as well as the use of stencils (called pochoir). He stated that printmaking made his paintings richer, and gave him new ideas for his work. In 1967, Miro was introduced to carborundum (silicon carbide engraving); combining this technique with other printmaking processes, he was able to produce images that rivaled the original qualities of painting. He continued to explore the carborundum aquatints the rest of his life, and in 1970 the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition specially devoted to these prints. In his later years, he spent most of his time doing etchings, doing large-scale aquatints and book illustrations.

Much of his work can be found in the Guggenheim and Museum of Modern Art in New York. During the 1970's he continued to receive wide acclaim, and had major exhibitions in the Musee National d'Art Moderne, and other major art institutions in Europe and America. In 1980, King Juan Carlos of Spain awarded Miro the Gold Medal for Fine Arts. In 1983, the year of his 90th birthday (and his death), there were birthday celebrations for him in New York and Barcelona. In 1972, the Fundacio Joan Miro, Centre d'Estudis d'Art Contemporani ( Joan Miro Foundation ) was legally constituted in Barcelona. The museum opened in 1976, with a collection of Miro's drawings. A large selection of Miro's paintings, sculptures, textiles and prints are exhibited there, as well as exhibitions of other modern and contemporary artists. In the book Painters on Painting, Miro is quoted in an interview of 1947, saying that his favorite schools of painting are the cave painters - the primitives.

He claimed at one point that since the age of cave painting, art has done nothing but degenerate. He also expressed a liking for Odilon Redon, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky for their "esprit." For artists of "pure" painting, he preferred Picasso and Matisse, and felt that both of their points of view are important. He added that the direction painting ought to take was to "rediscover the sources of human feeling." He also stated that he made no distinction between painting and poetry, and that painting is "like making love - it is an exchange of blood, a total embrace - reckless and defenseless." He said his aim was to help painting advance beyond the easel, to push its limits; to ceate a response first of physical sensation, then a great impact on the psyche of the viewer. He considered pure abstraction to be an absurdity, and empty. Like Gaudi, Miro was fascinated with the Catalonian language; he demanded in his will that his funeral be held in Catalonian style with the obituary written in the Catalan language.

Miro's images, which came from his memory, the unconscious, dreams, and transformative modernist art processes, are at once childlike, innocent and sophisticated. His two poles of existence, Catalonia and Paris, reflect this combination of rural and cosmopolitan. His forms (creatures such as people, birds, insects and animals) are whimsical and expressive, as well as inventive. The ultimate meaning of all of his abstracted realities may not be known, but I think it's safe to say that they all had a meaning for him, in his childhood, in his dreams, and in his life. Links to Miro's work: Joan Miró Biography - life, school, young, son, information, born, year Joan Miró Biography Palma de Majorca, Spain Spanish painter The Spanish painter Joan Miró was one of the first surrealists (artists who created art that emphasized fantastic imagery who were part of a movement called surrealism that began in the early twentieth century). Miró developed a highly personalized visual language that originated from prehistoric and natural sources.

Early life Joan Miró was born the first son of Michel Miró Adziras and Dolores Ferra on April 20, 1893, in Montroig near Barcelona, Spain. He came from a long line of hardworking craftsmen, and his father also worked as a goldsmith and a watchmaker. Although Miró did poorly at school, he began drawing regularly at the age of eight. (His sketchbooks of 1905 contain nature studies from Tarragona and Palma de Majorca, both areas in Spain). In 1907 he attended the Lonja School of Fine Arts in Barcelona where he received encouragement from his teachers. After a brief period working as a clerk, he attended the Gali School of Art in 1912, also in Barcelona. Career begins After Miró completed his artistic education in Barcelona, he produced portraits and landscapes in the Fauve manner, a style of painting popular around 1900 that emphasized brilliant and aggressive colors.

He had his first one-man show in Barcelona in 1918 and later that year he became a member of the Agrupacio Courbet, to which the ceramist Joseph Llorenz Artigas belonged. In 1919 Miró made his first trip to Paris, France, and thereafter he spent the winters in Paris and the summers in Montroig. He met members of the Dada group, an artistic and literary movement which sought to expand the boundaries of conventional (having to do with the common and the unoriginal) art. His first one-man show in Paris was held in 1921 and his paintings of this period reflect cubist (having to do with an artistic movement in the early twentieth century which used geometric shapes) influences. His painting, Montroig ( The Olive Grove; 1919), for example, has a frontal, geometric pattern greatly influenced by cubism. The Tilled Field (1923–1924) marked the turning point in Miró's art toward a personal style. In the midst of a landscape with animals and delicately drawn objects are a large ear and eye; thus the person of the painter comes into the picture.

The change in his art was furthered by his encounter with the works of Paul Klee (1879–1940), Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), and Jean Arp (1887–1966). Miró's message Miró's aim was to rediscover the sources of human feeling, to create poetry by way of painting, using a vocabulary of signs and symbols, plastic metaphors (an implied similarity between two different things), and dream images to express definite themes. He had a genuine sense of humor and a lively wit, which also characterized his art. His chief consideration was social, to get close to the great masses of humanity, and he was deeply convinced that art can make a genuine appeal only when returning to the roots of experience. In this respect Miró's attitude can be compared to that of Klee. Miró was connected with the surrealists from 1924 to 1930. Surrealism was a source of inspiration to him, and he made use of its Joan Miró. Reproduced by permission of Archive Photos, Inc. methods; however, he never accepted any surrealist "doctrine," or teachings.

Rather, his art, like Klee's, seems more connected to modern fantastic art. Under the impact of surrealism Miró painted the Harlequin's Carnival (1924-1925) with its frantic movement of semiabstract (having both recognizable and unrecognizable qualities) forms. In 1926 he worked together with Max Ernst (1891–1976) on the sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev's ballet Roméo et Juliette. Larger works and legacy In 1936 Miró fled to Paris during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39; a revolt against the conservative Republican government). The following year he created a large mural, the Reaper, for the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exposition in Paris. His work began to achieve great power through increased simplicity, intensified color, and abstraction, as in the Bullfight (1945), Woman and Bird in Moonlight (1949), and Painting (1953). He was awarded the Grand Prix International at the Venice Biennale for his graphic work.

Miró's most famous monumental works are the two ceramic walls, Night and Day (1957–59) , for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) building in Paris; the mural painting (1950) and the ceramic mural (1960) for Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the ceramic mural (1967) for the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. In 1975 Miró demonstrated his devotion to his native country with the donation of the Miró Foundation to the city of Barcelona, Spain. The building, which houses his works and the exhibitions of other artists, was designed by the artist's great friend, Josep Lluis Sert. One exhibition room was dedicated to the showing of works by young artists who had not yet been discovered by the public. Miró died in Palma de Majorca, Spain, on December 25, 1983, at the age of ninety. Miró enjoyed international acclaim during his long and productive career.

He was one of the many outstanding Spaniards—including Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Juan Gris (1887–1927), Salvador Dali (1904–1989), and Francis Picabia—who, by belonging to the School of Paris, helped to establish the high esteem in which it was held during the first half of the twentieth century. And like many of those other artists, Miró continued to energetically produce his art and to experiment with form and subject long after the years of his initial celebrity had passed. For More Information

Question: What nationality was the painter Joan Miro?
Answer: SPANISH