Joan Miró: Biography & Artwork

Joan
Miró

One of the foremost Spanish painters of the 20th century, Joan Miró is best known for his unique visualisation of the subconscious and surreal combined with folk motifs that reflect his own Catalan upbringing. Interested in buying or selling a Miró original print and edition? Browse artworks from the artist's portfolio and enquire today. We provide print value advice and market consultancy, with zero obligation to sell.

Biography

Often cited as a forgotten figure in Surrealism, Joan Miró is well-known as the foremost painter of the subconscious mind. Miró’s art combined Catalan Folk Art with Cubism and Surrealism in abstract and dream-like landscapes.

Born in Barcelona in 1893, Miró began making art as early as the age of 7, when he attended drawing classes at a private school in Barcelona’s old town. Later, in 1907, the 14-year-old Miró enrolled at The Escola de la Llotja, a renowned fine art academy. By 1918, Miró had held his first solo show at Barcelona’s Galeries Dalmau. By 1920, he had moved to Paris: the home of the Surrealists.

Many of Miró’s early artworks bear a relationship to the countryside, specifically that of his native Catalonia. Works such as La Masia (The Farm), from 1921-22, depict the inventory of a traditional Catalan farmhouse. The work combines the realist representation of farm machinery with a semi-Cubist and Symbolist treatment of landscape and perspective and expresses Miró’s ‘split’ interests in both traditional Catalan painting, and the artistic movements emerging in Paris. Commenting on the piece, Miró dubbed The Farm ‘the point of departure for what was to follow.’

Miró’s career began to take hold following his move to Paris. After exhibiting both in his native Barcelona and in Paris, where he had a solo exhibition at the private Galerie La Licorne, Miró formally joined the Surrealists in 1924.

During the ‘20s, Miró's work revolved around his famous ‘dream pictures’, like his 1925 The Birth Of The World. The piece features a series of geometric shapes which seem to float above the otherwise grungy, unevenly primed canvas. To create the work, Miró combined expressive painting techniques with carefully calculated composition. He also began to pursue abstraction with a greater intensity, producing his first ‘Blue’ paintings, such as the iconic Etoile Bleue (1927). This work would directly inspire his equally well-known Triptych Bleu, I, II, III (1961).

By the 1930s, Miró had collaborated with influential Surrealist artists, such as Max Ernst, and became fiercely committed to depicting the struggles of his native Spain, embroiled in Civil War from 1936. In 1937, he painted his mural The Reaper – a depiction of peasant revolt – for the Paris World Exhibition. Following the end of World War Two, a period which saw the artist flee the Nazi invasion of France and return to his native Spain, Miró became internationally famous, exhibiting widely in the United States.

Amongst Miró’s most significant artistic influences is the Fauvist movement of the early 1900s. Taking its name from the French word ‘fauve’, or ‘wild beast’, the movement was characterised by expressive, colourful, and painterly representations. Its members - les Fauves - exhibited for the first time in 1905 at Paris’s renowned Salon d’Automne exhibition. Henri Matisse is perhaps the most well-known member of the movement.
Throughout his lengthy career Miró took great inspiration from the Cubist movement, imbuing his artworks with a geometric approach which led André Breton to describe him as ‘the most surreal of us all’.
The work of Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, therefore, proved equally influential; the artist’s transition between traditionally representational art and a radical approach to applying paint is widely-hailed as having facilitated a turning point in art history, and the advent of Cubism.
Miró was a lifelong supporter of independence for his native Catalonia. The 1924 abstract painting, The Hunter (Catalan Landscape), depicts a landscape that recalls life on the artist’s family farm in Catalonia. Various references to the region’s culture and positioning within European politics and geography pepper the piece: in the foreground, the word ‘sard’, a shortened form of ‘Sardana’, references the Catalan national dance. In the rear of the painting, the Catalan flag is sandwiched between the national flags of the region’s neighbours, France and Spain.
Miró created artworks up until his death at the age of 90 in 1983. In 1974, the artist collaborated with fellow Catalan artist, Josep Royo, to create a tapestry that would later hang at the World Trade Center in New York City.
Two years prior to his death, in 1981, a large public sculpture entitled The Sun, The Moon And One Star was unveiled in the US city of Chicago and it is still standing today. The work is a scaled-up version of a bronze model Miró had created in 1967 with the same name.