Femmes, oiseau, 1977
Joan Miró is one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th century and is considered one of the main figures of Surrealism even though he avoided any artistic movement giving his art a non academic approach. His technical and formal experiments show his relation with the land, the environment, the dreams and his interest in everyday objects. He created a unique and personal universe.
Joan Miró began his studies at the School of Commerce but soon moved to the School of Industrial and Fine Arts of Barcelona. In 1912 Miró decided to focus entirely in art; he discovered Dada and Surrealism, as well as Catalan and French avant-garde publications. During this period, Joan Miró got seriously ill and moved to Mont-Roig to his parents' country house in Catalonia. This episode had a strong influence on his art and life.
After his first exhibitions in Barcelona, he moved to Paris in the early 1920's. There he met important figures of the moment as André Masson, André Breton, Michel Leiris, Jean Arp and Max Ernst, among others. He collaborated with Ernst on the costumes and set designs of Romeo and Juliet's ballet. He started to investigate different disciplines as sculpture, collage, assembly of objects or paintings on masonite. Throughout his artistic career he reflects an interest in the subconscious, memory, fantasy, imagination, the "childish", poetry and the culture and traditions of Catalonia.
Joan Miró had his first exhibitions in the United States during the 1940's. Some of his most relevant were in New York at the Pierre Matisse Gallery or his first major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Joan Miró began to receive public commissions including murals and monumental scale sculptures: in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris (awarded with the Guggenheim International Award), in Harvard University or Barcelona's Airport.
From the 1950s Joan Miró achieved international recognition and his art reaches all over the world. He settled permanently in Palma de Mallorca and produced his first works in ceramics. He applied the technique to enormous murals that can still be admired in different cities. In 1975, the Miró Foundation in Barcelona was opened to manage the artist's legacy. Miró worked until his final years and died in 1983 at the age of 90. Considered one of the best visual artists of the 20th century, his work is included in great public and private collections of the world, including: the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the MoMA, the Metropolitan; the National Gallery in Washington; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
