JOAN
MIRÒ

The son of a Catalan goldsmith, Joan Miró began drawing from a very young age.
It was in his family home in Mont-roig del Camp—one of the places, along with the island of Mallorca, that would become central sources of inspiration for his art—that he first discovered his artistic vocation. In his native Barcelona, he began studying in the mid-1910s, first at the Escuela de Arte under Francesc Galí, and later at the Circulo Artístico de San Lluc. In 1918, he held his first solo exhibition at the Galeries Dalmau.

In 1920, he moved to Paris, where he joined the vibrant artistic and literary community centered in the Montparnasse district. There, he came under the deep influence of both the Cubist painting of Picasso and the avant-garde experiments of artists like Max Ernst and Man Ray, as well as the Dadaist and Surrealist writers and poets. Among these, Tristan Tzara, André Breton, and Jean Arp played especially important roles in his development.

After an initial phase marked by a dramatic and expressionist style, Miró developed a kind of ecstatic realism, tinged with a sophisticated primitivism, which soon shifted toward geometrization. His line work became simplified, reflecting an adherence to Cubist principles. By 1924, he had begun to form a truly personal style: biomorphic, stylized elements placed in flat, horizontally structured spaces transformed reality into a dreamlike world.

He later became associated with the Generation of '27, alongside other Spanish-born Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel, and writers like Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda, Rafael Alberti, and Vicente Aleixandre. His exhibition at the Galerie Georges Bernheim in Paris in 1928 marked his artistic breakthrough. Miró continued to explore dreamlike painting and automatic drawing, with increasingly rarefied forms that became protean, threadlike, and amoebic.

From the 1930s onward, Miró divided his time between Paris, Barcelona, and Mallorca. In 1929, he married his wife Pilar, and in 1956, he made Mallorca his permanent home, establishing both his residence and his studio there.

Over the following decades, while remaining true to his surrealist, fantastical vision, he continued the artistic experimentation he had begun early in his career, branching into painting, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, and tapestries, using a wide variety of techniques and materials.

The recipient of numerous international awards and accolades, Miró exhibited his work worldwide and created large-scale sculptures, urban furnishings, and architectural decorations in various cities, including Paris and Barcelona.

In the early 1980s, his work increasingly leaned toward abstract expressionism—a movement that had deeply influenced him during his stay in the United States in the 1940s—and he explored ever more innovative forms of artistic language and technique.
He passed away on December 25, 1983, in Palma de Mallorca.