Joan Miró
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Joan Miró (April 20, 1893 – December 25, 1983) was a painter, sculptor and ceramist born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
Miró was drawn towards the arts community that was gathering in Montparnasse and in 1920 moved to Paris. There, under the influence of Surrealist poets and writers, he developed his unique style: organic forms and flattened picture planes drawn with a sharp line. Generally thought of as a Surrealist because of his interest in automatism and the use of sexual symbols (for example, ovoids with wavy lines emanating from them), Miró’s style was influenced by Surrealism and Dada, though it is very hard to say to just what extent or in exactly what ways the latter influenced his style, yet Miró rejected membership to any artistic movement in the interwar European years. This strong individualistic streak benefited Miró and accommodated his individualism. By not becoming an official member of the Surrealists, Miró was free to experiment with any artistic style that he wished without compromising his position within the group and being accused of not being a “true” Surrealist. In addition, he was free to concentrate on his art and pursue his own interests while the art world, both within and between groups, politicked and jockeyed for prominence. Miró’s artistic autonomy, at least autonomous in that he was not required to adhere to any one particular style, is reflected in his work and his willingness to work with several mediums.
In 1926, he collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered the technique of "grattage," in which he troweled pigment from his canvases.
Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma de Mallorca on October 12, 1929, and on July 17, 1931 the couple had a daughter, Dolores.
Shuzo Takiguchi published the first monograph on Miró in 1940.
Joan Miró won the 1954 Venice Biennale printmaking prize, and in 1980 he received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos of Spain. In 1959, Andre Breton asked Miro to represent Spain in, The Homage to Surrealism, among the works of Salvador Dali, Enrique Tabara, and Eugenio Granell.
In his final decades Miró accelerated his work in different media producing hundreds of ceramics, including the Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun at the UNESCO building in Paris. He also made temporary window paintings (on glass) for an exhibit.
In the last years of his life Miró wrote his most radical and least known ideas, exploring the possibilities of gas sculpture and four dimensional painting.
Miró died in Majorca, Spain, and was interred in the Montjuïc cemetery in Barcelona.
Surrealism founder André Breton described him as "the most Surrealist of us all," though Miró never formally expressed allegiance to the Surrealist movement. Miró however, confessed to creating one of his most famous works, "Harlequin's Carnival" while hallucinating due to an overdose on acid. Breton was known for his affinity to automatism, and promoted using starvation, lack of sleep, and drugs for inducing hallucinogenic states conducive to create art that reveal the subconscious. In an interview with biographer Walter Erben, Miró expressed his dislike for art critics, saying, they "are more concerned with being philosophers than anything else. They form a preconceived opinion, then they look at the work of art. Painting merely serves as a cloak in which to wrap their emaciated philosophical systems.” This quotation reveals the high priority Miró placed on artistic technique and his disregard for those who use art as a cover for larger ideological concerns. These concerns, more often than not, were usually aimed at placing the bearer of the ideology in a more prominent, commercially and critically, position. Miró preferred, if anything, to just paint, however passé or naïve that may have been at the time.
His work has been interpreted as Surrealism fascination in the subconsious mind, an interest in recreating the child-like, and Catalan and Spanish pride. In numerous writing and interviews dating from the 1930s forward, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods and his desire to abandon them (in his words "murder" and "assassinate" them) in favor of more contemporary means of expression. Today, his paintings sell between US$250,000 and US$8 million. Many of his pieces are exhibited in the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona.
