Joan Miró (1893-1983)

Joan Miró was born in Barcelona and learned to draw at the early age of 7. In 1918 Josep Dalmau the avant-garde art dealer gave him his first solo exhibition at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona. By 1920 Miró had moved to Paris but still returned to his beloved Catalan for the summers.

 With a unique ‘dream like’ style to his painting, Miró’s work reflects his interest in Surrealism/Fauvism and his disregard for the conventional artistic styles. He disliked art critics and rejected being labelled in any artistic style or movement, wishing to be artistically free, often using icons, objects and later symbolism within his artwork. Miró’s The Tilled Field (1923/1924) on the Guggenhiem website is beautiful and perhaps compare with paintings by Kandinsky or the sculpture of Jean Arp.

Always experimental, he created in many forms including Public Sculpture (Moon Bird 1966, based on his smaller 1946 bronze sculpture held by The Met, New York) and Ceramics; however, it is his lithographs and print making that brings him into most people’s homes, as his original paintings can run into many £ millions.