Miro

Joan Miro (1893 - 1983)

Joan Miro (1893-1983) studied art at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts and at the Academia Gali. His parents would rather have seen him take a job in business but after a few years his parents finally accepted their son's choice of a career as an artist.  At the start of his career Miro tried different painting styles like Fauvism and Cubism. In 1921, after a series of trips to Paris he settled there permanently.

He met Pablo Picasso and many of the other great artists living in Paris - the centre of arts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. From 1924 on, Miro joined the circle of the Surrealist theorist Andre Breton. His painting style took a turn to Surrealism. His comrades were Andre Masson and Max Ernst but he never integrated himself completely into this group. By 1930 the artist had developed his own style. Miro art is characterized by brilliant colours combined with simplified forms and greatly influenced by Catalan folk art. In the 1930s Miro's fame and recognition became international. From 1940 to 1948 he was back in Spain, during which, he experimented in different media; sculpture and murals. In 1947, he came to the USA for the first time and had several solo shows.

The most important one was a retrospective at the MoMA in 1951 and in 1959. In 1954 he won a prize at the Venice Biennale. After World War II, his first trip to the USA pushed his popularity and the market value of his art work. In 1956 Miro moved into the villa of his dreams, located in Palma de Majorca. In 1992 it was transformed into the Miro Museum.  Miro was a dedicated print maker who worked in lithographs and etchings with carborundum . Miro is among those modern artists like Picasso or Chagall whose works were published in editions targeted at a collector audience, making Miro art available for art lovers around the world.