Birth Year : 1893
Death Year : 1983
Country :
Joan Miro was born in Montroig in the province of Catalonia, Spain.
He began to study art when he was fourteen, at the Barcelona School of
Fine Arts, but after a short time he enrolled at the Gali Academy in the
same city. When he was eighteen, he decided that academic instruction was
not giving him anything very useful, and began to work alone. Upon his
first visit to Paris in 1919, he came under the influence of Braque
and Picasso, and for a time he painted
in the Cubist manner. By 1925, however, he had become a member of the Surrealist
group. He exhibited with them in their first show, and his work began to
take on the style and character now associated with his name. At about
this time he worked with Max Ernst on the sets and costumes of Roméo
et Juliette, a Diaghilev Ballet russe production. His famous Harlequin's
Carnival, now in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, was also painted
at this time. In 1928 Miro traveled to Holland and was exhibited for the
first time in New York. He then began producing a group of collages that
was shown in Paris in 1930, and in 1937 he painted a large mural for the
Paris Exhibition. Miro left France in 1940 and went to the island of Majorca,
where he continued to paint, began to make lithographs, and did ceramic
work with Artigas. He returned to Paris in 1944, and divided his time between
that city and Barcelona, continued to paint, but also designed tapestries
and rugs, made ceramics, and created sculptures in stone and wood. Miro's
work, sometimes called "hiomorphic abstraction," is brilliant in color.
It is carefully composed of curvilinear shapes that are as mobile and fluid
as the changing shapes of the amoeba. He was the leader of the school of
Surrealists whose work was disciplined yet not intellectual. His melting
forms transport us to a timeless universe furnished with magical symbols
and characters which approach human individuality. The fascination of Miro
lies in the fact that we can never quite transform the ideas he offered
into specific words or thoughts.
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Joan
Miro
Libellula
d'ailes vermelles
Joan
Miro
Dog
Barking at the Moon
Joan
Miro
Carnival
of Harlequin
Joan
Miro
Dona
Escoltant Musica
Joan
Miro
L'oro
dell'azzurro
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all Joan Miro
Books about Joan
Miro |
