Joan Miró

Available Works

Biography

Joan Miró was a Catalan modern artist known for combining abstraction with Surrealist imagery. He was born on April 20, 1893, in Barcelona, Spain, into a family of artisans, and his father’s work as a watchmaker and goldsmith shaped Miró’s attention to craft. Although his parents initially wanted him to pursue business, Miró studied art alongside business school and later trained under Francesc Galí, who encouraged him to think carefully about form and space. Early in his career, he experimented with Fauvism and Cubism and drew inspiration from Cézanne and Catalan landscapes. By the late 1910s, he began dividing his time between Spain and Paris, producing works such as The Farm and The Tilled Field that gradually moved toward abstraction. In the mid-1920s, Miró became associated with the Surrealist movement and gained recognition for his dream paintings, which used simplified forms and symbols to explore the unconscious. During the 1930s, he moved away from strict Surrealist rules and expanded his practice to include sculpture, collage, and ceramics. His work grew more expressive during the Spanish Civil War and World War II, including pieces such as The Reaper and the Constellations series. After the war, Miró achieved international recognition and completed major public commissions for institutions such as Harvard University and UNESCO, continuing to work across many media until his death on December 25, 1983, in Palma de Mallorca.