Joan Miro Biography

Joan Miro was born April 20, 1893 in Barcelona, Spain. Miro is one of the great pioneers of modern art. His ancestors were peasants and artisans, and his father was a goldsmith. Miro began drawing at a young age as a way to escape the strictures of family life. His choice of motifs - tufts of grass, insects, tiny birds - revealed an early affinity for the organic, a love, as one commentator says, of "the little things" of this world. After finishing his military service Miro worked in an office, and attended crafts courses in his spare time. "I was a paragon of awkwardness," he confessed. In painting, too, judged by academic standards, Miro was entirely unsuccessful.

"I was very unhappy," he wrote, "and in my feeling of rebellion, I became an ever greater dreamer." It was as such that he was to go down in the history of art, as a teller of lyrical and fabulous tales whose pictorial idiom was shaped out of allusive signs and symbols derived from subconscious depths.

In 1919, Joan Miro traveled to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso and made friends with him. From 1920 onwards Miro participated in Dadaist manifestations and became a close friend of Ande Masson, who lived in the next studio. This period saw Miro consciously attempting to forget the principles of art he had been taught, or, as he himself put it, "to kill painting." He became involved in Surrealism, adding to it his own, inimitable touch of playful humor. One aesthetic source of Joan Miro's new
approach, as Bonneficy notes, lay in "the paintings and sculptures of archaic cultures, which do not seek similarities, but rather in which symbol and metaphor form the essence of the work."

Love belongs to a group of works of 1925-1927, collectively referred to as "dream paintings," which were done in Paris after Miro's stylistic breakthrough in 1923-1924. The artist, Joan Miro, himself described the picture as follows: "It is a work that I love very much, and which caused me a great deal of worry, because I thought it had been lost." The idea for the painting came during my Christmas holidays in Barcelona, as I was watching a dancer - the vertical, upward line and the circles describe her movements. In a notebook I had in my pocket I drew a few rapid sketches, which I developed after my return to Paris in the Rue Blomet" (the address of Miro's studio at the time).

Joan Miro (1893-1983) ranks among the most important artists of the 20th century. An inventive and imaginative painter, sculptor, ceramicist and printmaker, he changed forever the course of modern art. Although he derived his own visual vocabulary from nature, his works are frequently viewed as interesting abstract compositions, an effect that is enhanced by his vivid palette. More than any of his contemporaries, Miro’s iconography forms a bridge between figurative and abstract imagery, and had a profound influence on succeeding generations of artists. Miro’s sparsely ordered lyrical canvases of the 1920’s and 30’s catapulted him to the fore of the Surrealist movement. A classification that persists yet he and his work stand apart as unique. However, the Surrealist precept of automatism (allowing the subconscious to dictate forms) helped to fuel his vivid imagination throughout his career, leading him to spawn sensuous biomorphic imagery with universal appeal. Miro did identify strongly with the Surrealist poets, finding in their verse the inspiration he sought for his own efforts. Their reward was his friendship and collaboration on many artists’ books, to which he would contribute the illustrations for their poetry.

Joan Miro Ferra, the future artist was the son of a goldsmith and the grandson of a blacksmith. His mother was from the nearby Balearic Island of Majorca, and her father was a cabinetmaker. No doubt this heritage of craftsmanship had an impact on his desire and aptitude to become an artist. As a boy, Miro divided his time between Barcelona and Majorca, places steeped in the proud traditions and culture of Catalonia, a province in the northeast of Spain, strongly influenced by France, which has long sought its independence. As a Catalan child at the turn of the century, he was imbued with a rich tapestry of folklore and fantasy that enriched his dreams and later informed his paintings. Miro, who was notoriously taciturn, is quoted as saying, "When I see a tree, for instance a carob tree, which is a very typical tree at home in Catalonia, I feel that tree is talking to me. It has eyes. One can talk to it. A tree is also a human being and so is a pebble."

A seminal influence was Miro’s exposure to complete interiors of ninth to twelfth century frescoed churches in the course of his family’s regular visits to the Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona. A tour of these ecclesiastical chambers is an awe-inspiring experience; one is surrounded on all sides and overhead by the events of the life of Christ, the martyrdom of the saints, hell-fire and paradise. Miro credits this experience as being the first real impact of art on his life. When compared to interiors rendered by French and Italian artisans of that era these works seem crude and naïve. These Catalan chapel interiors are remarkable for their uniformity of technique over several centuries. The images depicted are uncomplicated, flat, frontal and cartoon-like. Yet they have the power to communicate and mystify simultaneously. This accounts for their continual usage over such a long period of time. The colors employed are surprisingly primary—red, yellow, blue and green, all heavily outlined in black and surrounded by a darkly shaded field lending a Spanish solemnity to the entire tableau. Miro used similar artistic devices throughout his career. His sense of scale also seems indebted to these works. In Miro’s compositions a large central personage often dominates the scene about which several disproportionately smaller figures frolic with no preconceived notion of scale. This is a phenomenon often found in the artwork of children where the psychological importance of a loved one or an authority figure outweighs optical reality. A parent or dog, for example, can be bigger than a building or a tree or any other being. This scale relationship can also be found in ancient Egyptian art to convey the hierarchical importance of one individual in relationship to another.

By the age of seven, Joan Miro’s artistic talent was already evident in the drawing classes he took after normal classroom hours. At the age of fourteen Miro was enrolled simultaneously in a business school and at La Lonja School of Fine Arts where he found the formalism stifling, but was encouraged by a few of his professors. In 1910, bowing to parental pressure, he abandoned his artistic pursuits to take a position as a clerk with a business firm in Barcelona, but soon suffered a nervous breakdown followed by the onset of typhoid fever. Two years later after convalescing at his parents’ farm in Montroig, Miro was allowed to enroll at Francisco Gali’s Escola d’Art, where he flourished in that school’s anti-academic orientation. He learned to draw from touch (feeling the shape of things with eyes closed), painted his first oils and had the opportunity to visit exhibitions of Impressionist, Fauvist and Cubist art, as well as to meet other young artists such as Josep Llorens i Artigas. Decades later they would collaborate to create innovative ceramics. After graduating from Gali’s school in 1915, Miro began to paint in a Fauvist manner and read French avant-garde magazines and poets such as Apollinaire and Reverdy. Joan Miro had his first one-man show in Barcelona at Galeries Dalmau in 1918 and made his first trip to Paris the following year where he met Pablo Picasso.

By 1920, Joan Miro had settled in Paris and began to participate in Dada activities. New, minutely detailed paintings attempted to use cubist effects to analyze figures as three-dimensional objects suspended in space. Miro learned that new inspirations led him to create works in a series, an approach that confirmed integrity to all of his later efforts. After several financially tenuous years, Miro painted his first Surrealist painting, The Tilled Field, in 1924, the same year that Andre Breton issued the first manifesto for this radical new art movement. Miro began to create large canvases with mixed media including: charcoal, chalk, pencil and oil upon very neutrally shaded grounds—more drawings than paintings. These works were influenced by earlier works of Picabia and de Chirico with Miro adapting and transforming some of their imagery into his own highly personalized symbolism. These works were scarcely about color, but were dominated by a geometric division of the picture surface. Miro was embraced by the Surrealists as one of their own and his successful exhibition at the Pierre Gallery, Paris in 1925, had the atmosphere of an official Surrealist demonstration. Breton pronounced Miro to be "Perhaps… the most surrealist of all of us". The artist, Joan Miro, however, never completely committed himself to the Surrealist doctrine, especially in regard to politics or the disciplined approach he took to his art. However, the Surrealist concept of automatism and exploiting fortuitous accidents to allow his creative subconscious to emerge became a regular part of his regimen. This would later be ordered and balanced by his aesthetic sensibility and conscious reasoning.

From 1928-29, Joan Miro initiated his first series of collages utilizing such randomly found objects as string, linoleum, nails, leather, wire, strips of sandpaper and tarpaper. Miro used these to concoct elegant, whimsical compositions with the slightest addition of pencil lines for balance. Joan Miro’s first prints date from 1929-30, lithographs to illustrate Tristan Tzara’s, l’Arbre des Voyageurs; the simple large forms and delicate lines employed share a kinship with his collages. A few years later, in 1933, he tried his hand at dry-point etching, producing Daphnis and Chloe, a scene filled with juxtaposing abstract shapes. A few months later Miro engraved his first etchings to accompany the text, Enfances, by Georges Hugnet and devised another series of collages with postcards, photos, images from advertisements and other inharmonious anecdotal elements upon which he superimposed his surreal fantasies. The resultant compositions clashed with accepted norms and were, at once disturbing and fascinating.

In 1934, Joan Miro designed his first color pochoirs (stencils), including the dramatic two examples for CAHIERS D’ART. The pochoir, a printmaking technique popular at that time in France, was ideal to enable Miro’s brilliant colors to breath life into his surrealistic figures. Joan Miro effectively harnessed this technique again in 1937, with AIDEZ L’ESPAGNE (Help Spain), a heartrending cry against Franco and fascism and a rare political statement from Miro. It was published in two editions, one with text and one without, and parallels Picasso’s Dreams and Lies of Franco etchings. These were true testaments to the power of the printed image to communicate a message. The mid 1930’s saw the artist experimenting with new materials and media, including powdered pastels on sandpaper and colored paper grounds. In works of this period he depicted crude figures metamorphosing into animals and insects. The power of these pastel drawings transcended their medium placing them on an equal footing with his paintings. Miro also returned to simple ink on paper drawings at this time to render oddly distorted human figures notable for their rhythmic grace.

In 1938, Joan Miro turned his attention to etching at the Paris studio of the Cubist painter Marcoussis, launching a prodigious series of surrealistic images under the tutelage of the more experienced engraver. Included in this impressive body of work is Portrait de Miro, engraved together by both Joan Miro and Marcoussis, as well as the remarkable, SERIE NOIRE ET ROUGE (Black and Red Series) which extracted eight fantastic images from only two plates and two colors of ink by manipulating the same two plates in a very creative fashion. Miro’s love affair with printmaking was kindled leading him to state years later, "It (printmaking) makes my painting richer; it gives me new ideas; it lets me proceed from new bases. Everything is connected."

As Nazi troops occupied France in 1940, Joan Miro relocated first to the South of France then to Barcelona, finally withdrawing to Palma de Majorca. He had never lost touch with his Catalonian ancestral home. While working mainly in Paris during the preceding two decades, he had visited the region often but now returned as a refugee. The familiar and undisturbed landscape of the island of Majorca was a welcome relief from war-torn France and also brought home to him the continuity of his vision from his earliest paintings to his latest works. He had invented a poetic visual language that was admired around the world and was no longer searching for a means of expression. Although materials with which to continue his work were not easily at hand, he began to paint perhaps his most definitive, mature works, CONSTELLATIONS, small scale mixed-media paintings that capture entire universes inhabited by Mironian symbols, signs and figures portrayed in brilliant colors and connected by sensitive lines—painted poetry. The BARCELONA SERIES of fifty lithographs occupied much of the artist’s time and energy from 1939 until finally published in 1944 by his friend Joan Prats in a rare edition of only five due to lack of financial backing. He would later often return to lithography as a medium of choice. In an International Surrealist Exhibition at the Maeght Gallery, Paris in 1947, Miro was given a prominent position as he had been in the earlier Surrealist Exhibitions, thereby reaffirming him as a leader of that significant movement. That same year, Joan Miro took his first trip to the United States for his premier exhibition at Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York and to fulfill a commission for a large mural in Cincinnati. While Miro was in New York he took the opportunity to visit Stanley William Hayter at the British artist’s famous print workshop, Atelier 17. There he made a number of etchings.

The 1950’s brought tremendous acknowledgement and recognition for Joan Miro with many international museum exhibitions devoted to his work. Miro's paintings began to take on a freer more forceful style, as testified to by the 1950 OISEAU (Bird) oil on panel presiding over this exhibition. Joan Miro frequently depicted birds throughout his long career, images that enable his pictorial fantasies to take flight and a viewer’s imagination to soar. At this same time his printmaking flourished with such extraordinary lithographs as FEMME AU MIROIR (Woman at the Mirror), 1957 and the legendary aquatint etchings: SUITE: LA BAGUE D’AURORE (Ring of Twilight) and LES FORESTIERS (The Forest Rangers). Often Miro would combine his two passions for painting and printmaking by including a few extensively hand-colored, unique works as part of an edition. The PARCHMENT SERIE III, on hand here, is a superb example dating from 1952-53. Here the black plate only from the related etching is printed on parchment and then richly embellished with gouache paint. While the artist, Joan Miro, was busy producing art, his new work was championed in Paris by Galerie Maeght and in New York by Pierre Matisse. The architect J. L. Sert designed a home with a large modern studio for Joan Miro near Palma in 1956. When his second trip to the United States was made in 1959, it was to honor him at retrospective exhibitions of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Awards, exhibitions and accolades began to accumulate as Joan Miro continued to extend the boundaries of his art.

In the 1960’s Joan Miro, while never ceasing to paint, devoted more and more of his time to printmaking, ceramics, murals and sculpture. He was attracted to printmaking and sculpture as a respite from the solitary labors of painting and as an opportunity for teamwork together with master printers and artisans who were extremely knowledgeable in their fields. From these varied experiences his own creative repertoire was enhanced and he found inspiration for all of his related works. For example, it is easy to understand how strongly calligraphic FEMME DANS LA NUIT (Woman in the Night), a 1967-71 wax crayon and watercolor featured in our exhibition, could easily have been conceived as a study for a lithograph in light of the mixed-media and scale employed. Similarly, the lushly imbued, UNTITLED gouache and watercolor of 1969-70 viewed herein could easily be related to a planned oil on canvas or aquatint etching. Joan Miro recognized an advantage in printmaking, "…a painting is a unique example for a single collector. But if I pull seventy-five examples, I increase by seventy-five times the number of people who can own a work of mine. I increase the reach of my message seventy-five times." Joan Miro died on December 25, 1983,in Spain.

A major breakthrough for his graphic work arrived through his introduction, by Robert Dutrou, to carborundum (silicon carbide engraving) in 1967. Joan Miro found that by combining this new technique with other etching methods, especially aquatint (a painterly technique of engraving a resin ground on an etching plate rather than the plate itself), he could invent images to rival any painting, thereby ennobling the art of printmaking. Among the first, and most famous, of these carborundum aquatints were EQUINOXE and LA FEMME AUX BIJOUX (The Jeweled Woman). They, with their companions from 1967 through 1969, set an incomparable standard for quality and indicated to the artist the incredible possibilities inherent to the carborundum technique, which he would continue to explore throughout the balance of his career. The importance of this series of carborundum aquatints conceived from 1967 through 1969 was recognized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1970 with a special exhibition devoted to them titled Joan Miro: Fifty Recent Prints.

In the final decade of Joan Miro’s life, he devoted himself primarily to the art of printmaking, literally flinging himself headlong into project after project. His retreat from painting was not due to any weakening of his creative abilities or fertile imagination, but rather a focus especially on etching as the chosen means to an end. Miro's large scale aquatints of 1974, such as LE SOMNAMBULE (Sleepwalker), LA FEMME TOUPIE (The Spinning Top Woman), and LE PERMISSIONNAIRE (The Liberty Man) with their magnificent colors and monumental scale encouraged Miro to further these pursuits. This was also a busy period for Robert Dutrou. From 1976 to 1981, Joan Miro created twenty-two compositions in etching, aquatint and carborundum with him, many on a large scale, as well as completing many engravings as illustrations for books. Joan Miro died on December 25, 1983, in Spain.

If you are interested in buying or selling some of Joan Miro's artwork, please click on the Joan Miro Lithograph & Etching section in the modern prints section of our web site and feel free to email or call us with any questions.