Miró

Spanish Catalan artist Joan Miró (1893 – 1983) is famous for his works in painting, sculpture, and ceramics. His work is strongly influenced by his hometown Barcelona, the scenic seaside, and the distinct style of that area. From early on, he was exposed to the arts through his parents’ professions: His mother was a goldsmith, father worked as a watchmaker.

Miro attended business school as well as art school, but fully devoted his time to art after recovering from a severe typhoid illness. His early style was inspired by the art of Paul Cezanne and Vincent van Gogh. In 1981, Miró set up his first solo exhibition at the Dalmau Galleries in Barcelona. Five years later, Miró joined the Surrealist movement in Paris. The poetic nature of Miró’s work fits well within the dream-like automatism of the group. He persistently and radically experimented with non-objectivity and explored the subconscious and childlike, manifesting in geometric shapes, pictorial signs, biomorphic forms. Many of his works in different media exhibit semi-abstracted objects, soon earned international acclaim.

Miró’s work has been associated to be a form of Surrealism but also veering towards Expressionism and Fauvism. However, his images display a visual vocabulary unmistakably of its own. As a manifestation of Catalan pride, museums in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca were dedicated to his work in the 1970s and 1980s.