Miró, Joan | Colección

20^th Century Spanish

The famous Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker and ceramist studied business at the School of Commerce to satisfy his father's wishes. Afterwards he enrolled at La Lonja School of Art in Barcelona and then at the art school founded by Francesc Galí, also in his hometown. It was there where he met the elite of Spanish avant-gardes, and together with some of them he founded the short-lived art movement known as

Agrupación Courbet

.

In 1920 Miró travelled to Paris for the first time. There he met major artists, Picasso included, and familiarized himself with the ideals of the surrealists, even though he would never fully embrace that movement. In Paris he developed his highly personal style, freely adapting all he had gleaned from Cubism
A term coined by the French critic Louis Vauxcelles (1870-1943) to designate the art movement that appeared in France in 1907 thanks to Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963), which brought about a definitive break with traditional painting. Widely viewed as the first avant-garde movement of the twentieth century, its main characteristic is the representation of nature through the use of two-dimensional geometric forms that fragment the composition, completely ignoring perspective. This visual and conceptual innovation meant a huge revolution and played a key role in the development of twentieth-century art.
and Fauvism
An art movement which developed in Paris in the early 1900s. It took its name from the word used by the critics—fauves, wild beasts—to define a group of artists who exhibited their works at the 1905 Salon d'Automne. By simplifying forms and using bold colours, they attempted to create highly balanced and serene works, a goal totally removed from the intention to cause outrage usually attributed to them. For many of its members Fauvism was an intermediary step in the development of their respective personal styles, as exemplified to perfection by the painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954).
. An excellent example of his work from this period is The Farm (1921-1922).

In the 1930s, already an internationally acclaimed artist, he embarked on what many experts have called the assassination of painting, a period of experimentation that involved his departure from painting to explore other materials and techniques, including

collage

, engraving, ceramics and sculpture, to name just a few.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, he decided to leave Barcelona, where he had been living for some years, and settled in Paris with his wife and daughter. There he took part at the Pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Another conflict, this time World War II, forced him to leave Paris and return to Spain. Here he settled in Palma de Mallorca in 1956 where the architect Josep Lluís Sert designed his dream studio.

Despite his low public profile Miró became a benchmark for younger generations of artists. From 1950 to 1960 he created large works for many public institutions, like those for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, Harvard University and the airport in Barcelona. From that moment on, Miró’s work could be seen in many places around the world, including Spain, where a retrospective exhibition was organised in his home city.

The Joan Miró Foundation opened in 1975 with a mission to promote contemporary art and to preserve paintings, sculptures, textiles and drawings by the artist. Miró died in Palma de Mallorca in 1983.