He was a painter, ceramist and sculptor with a passion for color and form. He created a signature style that was easily identifiable. His life played out essentially in two places, Catalonia and Paris.In Catalonia, he loved the country, its landscapes, its colors, its odors, and its grand promenades.
In Paris, the electric atmosphere, the people he met and the whole surrealist movement inspired him.
Crédit Photo on the right : Jacques Gomot, Office du tourisme de Saint Paul
Joan Miro was born on April 20th, 1893 in Barcelona. His father was a goldsmith and clockmaker.
With little interest in his studies, Joan only enjoyed drawing.In 1907, he signed up for the Fine Arts School of Barcelona (known as la Llotja) where he studied under Professors Modest Urgell and Joseph Pasco. But his father insisted that he study accounting at the same time as art.
After three years of study, he was employed as an accountant by a major retailer.Because he was managed so closely in this line of work, he fell into a state of depression that became aggravated by typhoid fever.
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His parents brought him to his family’s home in Montroig (Montrouge, in French) 140 kilometers from Barcelona. This place was a revelation to Miro, and he returned there regularly. The long walks he took in the area familiarized him with the various animals he would incorporate into his painting. In 1912, he at last followed his destiny, entering the Francesc d’A. Gali Academy, a school open to European avant-garde ideas. He met notable artists like Joan Prats, Joseph Francesc Rafols and Enric Cristofol Ricart. He learned to draw from memory. He discovered modern painting, including the works of Van Gogh, the Fauves and the Cubists. Beginning in 1915, his first works integrated the inspired schematism of cubism and the chromatic intensity taken from fauvism.He met Joseph Artigas who remained a faithful friend of Miro. In 1916, he met Joseph Dalmau, a gallery owner in Barcelona. His was a gallery where different artists got together, including Robert and Sonia Delaunay and Francis Picabia.
In 1918, Miro entered into a “detailist” phase where every landscape was analyzed in precise fashion. This period came to a head with “The Farm” (“La Masia”), a dictionary of forms which inspired the enthusiasm of Hemingway. In 1921, during his second visit to Paris, his work was exhibited by Dalmau in the “La Licorne” gallery on Rue La Boëtie. It was a commercial failure, but critics began to take notice of his work. From 1921 to 1932, Miro would spend six months in Paris and six months in Montroig, Catalonia every year. In 1922, he left for Paris and moved into the Rue Blomet in the 15th arrondissement. He said of his move that “it is in Paris that I was really trained intellectually.” He met poets Pierre Reverdy, Tristan Tzara and Max Jacob and he participated in dada events.
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He returned to a dreamy universe where all the painted objects escaped from their envelopes and flew off. The shapes created in the work “Forms” liberated themselves from “The Labored Earth.” This period reached its apogee when he created the Harlequin Carnaval.In 1925, he was under contract with the gallery manager Pierre Loeb.
In 1926, he met the protagonists of the surrealist movement, Breton, Ernst and Picabia. Breton said of the artist that, “Miro is more of a surrealist than any of us.” This was even as Miro declined any belonging to this movement. In 1929, the artist married.His work was charged with the atmosphere of this period. It was aggressive and energized before the Spanish Civil War, distanced from the real world when the 2nd World War break out. This was the period of the Constelaciones.
Miro, 1935 Miro, Credit Clovis Prevost Photo Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress
Alongside each of his important encounters with leading figures, Miro’s work and exhibitions were helping his reputation to grow. When he traveled in 1947 to the United States, the American public was already enamored with his work.In 1948, he put on his first show at the Maeght Gallery. This was the year that Aimé Maeght became his dealer.
In 1954, he won the Grand Prix of the Biennale of Venice.Beginning in 1956, he moved permanently to Palma de Mallorca where his studio was designed by Sert. The dimensions of this studio allowed him to change the format of his works. He received the Guggenheim Prize in 1958 for his ceramic mural works conceived for the UNESCO building in Paris.
Miro, Fondation Maeght In 1959, a retrospective exhibition was organized at the MOMA in New York, and then in 1962 at the Museum of Modern Art of Paris.He worked a great deal with ceramist Joseph Llorens Artigas. Together they set about in 1963 creating monumental sculptures in cement, iron, bronze and ceramics for the Labyrinth of the Maeght Foundation. Miro’s oeuvre is gigantic. He was interested in everything. He experienced as much pleasure painting as in sculpting and modeling. He experimented with different techniques for his etchings and his lithography. He completed stencils and collages, and he illustrated the works of Eluard and Tzara. He collaborated on journals like “Behind the Mirror.” His ceramic pieces were featured in a number of exhibitions. His artistic life was extremely productive and one can see his influence on Gorky, Dali, Rothko or Matisse.It wasn’t until he reached the age of 75 that he was granted his first official exhibition in Spain.
In 1971, Catalonia achieved autonomy and Sert (the architect of the Maeght Foundation) completed plans for the Joan Miro Foundation ( Albert Rafols-Casamada will be one of the administrators), the Centre d’Estudis d’Art Contemporani, which opened its doors in Barcelona in 1976. A few years before his death in 1983, a second foundation was created in Palma de Mallorca.
