Joan Miró
(Barcelona 1893 – Palma de Mallorca 1983)
Joan Miró was born in Barcelona in 1893 as the son of a goldsmith and watchmaker. In 1907 he had to leave high school because of bad grades and, at his father's request, began commercial training and took art lessons at the art academy "La Llotja" in Barcelona, where Pablo Picasso's father had taught and Pablo Picasso himself was a student.
After school he first worked as an accountant in a drugstore, but after a nervous breakdown and a typhoid illness, he gave up the commercial profession.
Finally, Miro could enroll at Frances Galí's private art school "Escola d’Art", which he attended from 1912 to 1915. Galí explained to Miró's father that he thought Joan was gifted. Galí also taught his students modern French art and the architecture of Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona's famous modernist artist.
Miró's father was partially able to buy Joan free from military service in World War I, but Joan suffered from being unable to be artistically active as usual.
In 1915 he set up his first studio in Barcelona.
In 1916 he met the art dealer Josep Dalmau, who became his sponsor. Through him he met Francis Picabia, who introduced Miró to Dadaism.
At the same time, surrealism became a major theme in art and Miró's work was also heavily influenced by the Fauves and the French Cubists in the years that followed. In 1918 Miró's first solo exhibition took place in Barcelona, which included 60 landscape paintings and still lifes.
In 1919 Miró traveled to Paris for the first time, where he visited Pablo Picasso in his studio. Picasso acquired a self-portrait from Miró that was painted that year. In 1920 Miró moved into a studio in Paris and befriended his neighbor, André Masson.
Miró always remained connected to his Catalan homeland, which is why he lived alternately in summer in Spain and in winter in Paris, where he had his first solo exhibition in 1921. His friends included Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway – the latter borrowed money to buy a painting by Miró in 1925.
In 1923, Joan Miró took part in the exhibition at the Salon d’Automne. Through André Masson, Miró got to know the surrealist group, where, among others. André Breton was a member. Miró became a member too but remained a silent outsider.
In 1928 Miró met the sculptors Constantin Brâncuși, Alberto Giacometti and Alexander Calder. With Giacometti and Calder he had a lifelong friendship, which is reflected in Miró's and Calder's works. Both artists made series entitled “Constellations” in the 1940s, with Calder making sculptures out of wood and metal and Miró painting gouaches. In 1929, at the suggestion of Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí joined the group of surrealists in Paris.
In 1932, a New York art dealer signed Miró.
In 1956 Miró moved his permanent residence to Palma. His wife's brother, who came from Mallorca, was an architect and built a house and studio for Miró. In the following years Joan Miró mainly created sculptures.
In 1959 there was a major Miró retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1960 he worked with Artigas on a mural for Harvard University and in 1961 traveled a third time to the United States.
In 1975 a foundation initiated by Miró was opened under the name Fundació Joan Miró. In 1981 the second foundation, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca, was established.
Miró is valued for his humorous, playful works of the 1920s and the post-war period. The political developments of the 1930s, especially the Spanish Civil War in 1936, led to a brutalization of Miró's art. In the 1940s, with the Constellations, Miró was able to reconnect with his painting work of the 1920s. He developed the characteristic Miró star and amorphous figures. Ceramics also played an important role in Miró's oeuvre.
In 1981 Joan Miró died in Palma de Mallorca and was buried in the family grave in Barcelona. His only daughter, honorary chairwoman of the Miró Foundations in Barcelona and Palma, died at the end of December 2004 at the age of 74.
