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Lillian Hancock
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Lillian Hancock
(United States)
Joan Miró
Joan Miró Biography
Joan Miró i Ferra (April 20, 1893 – December 25, 1983) was a Spanish (Catalan) painter, sculptor, and ceramist born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. His work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods and his desire to "kill", "murder", or "rape" them in favor of more contemporary means of expression.
Young Joan Miró
Young Miró was drawn towards the arts community that was gathering in Montparnasse and in 1920 moved to Paris. There, under the influence of the poets and writers, Joan Miró 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 in varying degrees by Surrealism and Dada, yet Joan Miró rejected membership to any artistic movement in the interwar European years. André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, described him as "the most Surrealist of us all." Miró confessed to creating one of his most famous works, Harlequin's Carnival, under similar circumstances:
"How did I think up my drawings and my ideas for painting? Well I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling..."
Joan Miró - Career
In 1926, Joan Miró collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered the technique of grattage, in which Joan Miró troweled pigment onto his canvases. Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma de Mallorca on October 12, 1929; their daughter Dolores was born July 17, 1931. Shuzo Takiguchi published the first monograph on Miró in 1940. In 1959, André Breton asked Miró to represent Spain in The Homage to Surrealism exhibition together with works by Enrique Tábara, Salvador Dalí, and Eugenio Granell.
Miró dabbled in architecture when Joan Miró designed the Maeght Foundation museum in Saint-Paul-en-Foret, France, which was completed in 1964.
Joan Miró and Experimental Style
By not becoming an official member of the Surrealists, Miró was free to experiment with any artistic style that Joan Miró wished without compromising his position within the group and being accused of not being a “true” Surrealist. Joan Miró pursued his own interests in the art world, both within and between groups which politicked and jockeyed for prominence. Miró’s artistic autonomy, in that Joan Miró did not adhere to any one particular style, is reflected in his work and his willingness to work with several media.
Joan Miró and critics
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."
Four-dimensional painting is a theoretical type of painting Miró proposed in which painting would transcend its two-dimensionality and even the three-dimensionality of sculpture.
Joan Miró and different media
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. Joan Miró 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.
Joan Miró and his death
Joan Miró died bedridden, at his home in Palma, Mallorca on December 25, 1983. Joan Miró suffered from heart disease, and had visited a clinic for respiratory problems two weeks before his death. Many of his pieces are exhibited today in the Fundació Joan Miró in Montjuic, Barcelona and the U.S. National Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Joan Miró is buried nearby, at the Montjuic cemetery. Today, his paintings sell for between US$250,000 and US$8 million.
