"I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music."
Joan Miro

Joan Miro (1893-1983)

Joan Miro 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.

Joan Miró Ferra was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona. At the age of 14, he went to business school in Barcelona and also attended the art school in the same city. Upon completing three years of art studies, he took a position as a clerk. After suffering a nervous breakdown, he abandoned business and resumed his art studies, attending Francesc Galí's Escola d'Art in Barcelona from 1912 to 1915. Miró received early encouragement from the dealer José Dalmau, who gave him his first solo show at his gallery in Barcelona in 1918.

In 1920 Miró made his first trip to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso. From this time, Miró divided his time between Paris and Montroig, Spain. In Paris he associated with the poets Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, and Tristan Tzara and participated in Dada activities. It was his unending quest to merge the poetry of his art with the writings of poets, to find their common ground, to bridge poetry and painting.

Dalmau organized Miró's first solo show in Paris, at the Galerie la Licorne in 1921. His work was included in the Salon d'Automne of 1923. In 1924 Miró joined the Surrealist group. His solo show at the Galerie Pierre, Paris, in 1925 was a major Surrealist event; Miró was included in the first Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre that same year. He visited the Netherlands in 1928 and began a series of paintings inspired by Dutch masters. That year he also executed his first papiers collés (pasted papers) and collages. In 1929 he started his experiments in lithography, and his first etchings date from 1933. But it was after World War II that he turned to the graphic media in earnest. This return to printmaking engaged Miro's imagination until his death, and produced a body of intricate, innovative graphics which always reflected a restless search for different methods of composition and different visual content.

During the early 1930s he made Surrealist sculptures incorporating painted stones and found objects. In 1936 Miró left Spain because of the civil war; he returned in 1941. The following year he was commissioned to create a monumental work for the Paris World's Fair.

Miró's first major museum retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941. That year Miró began working in ceramics with Josep Lloréns y Artigas and started to concentrate on prints; from 1954 to 1973 he worked intensely in these two mediums, including etchings, lithographs and book illustrations. He received the Grand Prize for Graphic Work at the Venice Biennale in 1954, and his work was included in the first Documenta exhibition in Kassel the following year. In 1958 Miró was given a Guggenheim International Award for murals for the UNESCO building in Paris.

Miró retrospectives took place at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, in 1962, and the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1974. In 1978 the Musée National d'Art Moderne exhibited over five hundred works in a major retrospective of his drawings.

Miró died on December 25, 1983, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.