Joan Miró i Ferrà was born on 20 April 1893, in Barcelona, Spain. In 1907, Miró enrolled at the Escola de Comerç to study business, simultaneously taking art classes at the Escola Superior d’Arts Industrials i Belles Arts (‘La Llotja’). After three years of study, he took up a job as a clerk but caught typhoid; in 1912, he decided to give up business and continue his art studies at a school run by Francesc Galí. The following year, he enrolled at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc. In 1916, Miró met dealer Josep Dalmau, who would introduce him to Maurice Raynal and Francis Picabia. Miró’s first solo exhibition is held at the Galeries Dalmau, Barcelona, in 1918.
In 1920, Miró travelled to Paris for the first time, and he would go on to spend the decade alternating between the French capital and Mont-roig, Catalonia. In Paris, Miró had a solo show organised by Dalmau at Galerie La Licorne (1921), and would meet Pablo Picasso, André Masson, Paul Éluard, Roland Tual, Georges Limbour, Ernest Hemingway (who purchases The Farm, c. 1921-22; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.), Ezra Pound and Michel Leiris. Whilst Miró’s work from the early 1920s reflected the influence of Cubism, over the course of the decade – influenced by the circle of Modernist poets, writers and artists in Paris – he developed his unique style of flattened picture planes, organic forms and linear symbols. In 1925, Miró met André Breton, and would have his first solo exhibition at the surrealist Galerie Pierre. The following year, he collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In 1928, Miró visited the Netherlands and executed his first papers collés and collages. He would also begin to explore printmaking, creating his first lithographs in 1929 and first etchings in 1933.
Miró returned to Barcelona in 1932, the same year he had his first exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York. In 1936, he went back to Paris and would remain there with his wife and daughter until 1940. Miró featured in the two major exhibitions – Cubism and Abstract Art and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism – held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1936. In France, he produced a large mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris World Fair in 1937, and continued to explore printmaking with Marcoussis, Roger Lacourière and Stanley W. Hayter. In 1940, Miró returned to Spain with his family, settling in Palma de Mallorca. Miró was the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941. In 1944, Miró began working in ceramics with Josep Lloréns y Artigas. He won the Grand Prize for Graphic Work at the XXVII Venice Biennale (1954), and featured in the first Documenta in Kassel (1955). In 1958, he executed murals for the UNESCO building in Paris. Miró had retrospectives at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris (1962, 1978), and Grand Palais, Paris (1974). Miró died on 25 December 1983, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
The Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona (inaugurated 1975) and the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró in Palma de Mallorca (inaugurated 1982), both hold major multimedia collections of Miró’s work. His work can also be found in the following selected international collections: the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon; the Tate Collection, London.
Please contact the gallery for further information on this artist.