|
Joan Miro (Spain) 1893- |  ARTIST PROFILE
Spanish painter, whose surrealist works, with their subject matter drawn from the realm of memory and imaginative fantasy, are some of the most original of the 20th century.
Miro was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona and studied at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts and the Academia Gal?. His work
before 1920 shows wide-ranging influences, including the bright colors of the fauves, the broken forms of cubism, and the powerful, flat two-dimensionality of Catalan folk art and Romanesque church frescoes of his native Spain. He moved to Paris in 1920, where, under the influence of surrealist
poets and writers, he evolved his mature style. Miro drew on memory, fantasy, and the irrational to create works of art that are visual analogues of surrealist poetry. These dreamlike visions, such as Harlequin's Carnival (1925, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo) or Dutch Interior (1928, Museum of Modern
Art, New York City), often have a whimsical or humorous quality, containing images of playfully distorted animal forms, twisted organic shapes, and odd geometric constructions. The forms of his paintings are organized against flat neutral backgrounds and are painted in a limited range of bright colors,
especially blue, red, yellow, green, and black. Amorphous amoebic shapes alternate with sharply drawn lines, spots, and curlicues, all positioned on the canvas with seeming nonchalance. Mirs later produced highly generalized, ethereal works in which his organic forms and figures are reduced to
abstract spots, lines, and bursts of colors.
Miro also experimented in a wide array of other media, devoting himself to etchings and lithographs for several years in the 1950s and also working in watercolor, pastel, collage, and paint on copper and masonite. His ceramic sculptures are especially
notable, in particular his two large ceramic murals for the UNESCO building in Paris (Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun,1957-59). Mirs died in Mallorca, Spain, on December 25, 1983.
"Mirs, Joan," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.
|
RELATED EXHIBITIONS
 Barcelona : Juan Miro. Parade of Obsessions
The Hague : Picasso, Miro, Dali. A century of Spanish Art
Links
Pilar and Joan Miro Foundation
|
|
ARTIST WORKS
|
thumbnail
click for full size |
WORK DETAILS |
 | | Title: | A Star Caresses the Breasts of a Negro Woman | | Medium: | 1938, dimensions 130?196cm, Oil on canvas | | Exhibited at: | Tate Modern | |
|
 | |
 | | Title: | Ciphers and Constellations in Love with a Woman | | Medium: | 1941, dimensions 46?38cm, Gouache on Paper | | Exhibited at: | Art Institute of Chicago | |
|
 | | Title: | Dialogue of the Insects | | Medium: | 1925, dimensions 65?92cm, Oil on canvas | | Exhibited at: | Private collection | |
|
 | |
 | | Title: | Dragonfly | | Medium: | 1951, dimensions 81?100cm, Oil on canvas | | Exhibited at: | Museo Del Prado | |
|
 | |
 | |
| |
 | | Title: | Joy of a Little Girl before the Sun | | Medium: | 1960, dimensions 130?162cm, Oil on canvas | | Exhibited at: | Private collection | |
|
|
34 Records Found!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Add to Favorites
Read/Write Review
Related Works