Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramist from Spain. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma, Mallorca in 1981.
Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism but with a personal style, sometimes also veering into Fauvism and Expressionism. He was notable for his interest in the unconscious or the subconscious mind, reflected in his re-creation of the childlike. His difficult-to-classify works also had a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an "assassination of painting" in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.
Paintings by Joan Miró
The Harlequin's Carnival (1924)
The Harlequin's Carnival (Spanish: Carnaval de Arlequín) is an oil painting painted by Joan Miró between 1924 and 1925. It is one of the most outstanding surrealist paintings of the artist, and it is preserved in the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.
Created between 1924 and 1925, Harlequin’s Carnival is one of Joan Miró's best-known pieces. Harlequin is the name of a well-known Italian comic theater character that is generally identified by his checkered costume. The ‘carnival’ in the title of the painting may refer to Mardi Gras, the celebration that occurs before the fasting of Lent begins.
Still Life with Old Shoe (1937)
Still Life with Old Shoe is a 1937 oil painting by Joan Miró, now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The work was given to the museum by James Thrall Soby in 1969.
At the start of the Spanish Civil War Miró spent some time at his house in Montroig del Camp but then left for France. On 16 December 1936 he arrived in Paris with his wife Pilar and daughter Maria Dolores. They lived in a very confined space with nowhere for Miró to work, so he simply noted down ideas on small cards. As he had done when he first went to Paris in 1920, Miró attended the drawing class at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere.
The Farm (Miró) (1920)
The Farm is an oil painting made by Joan Miró between the summer of 1921 in Mont-roig del Camp and winter 1922 in Paris. It is a kind of inventory of the masia (traditional Catalan farmhouse) owned by his family since 1911 in the town of Mont-roig del Camp. Miró himself regarded this work as a key in his career, describing it as "a summary of my entire life in the countryside" and "the summary of one period of my work, but also the point of departure for what was to follow." It now resides in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, where it was given in 1987 by Mary Hemingway, coming from the private collection of American writer Ernest Hemingway, who had described it by saying, “It has in it all that you feel about Spain when you are there and all that you feel when you are away and cannot go there. No one else has been able to paint these two very opposing things.”
The painter, though born in Barcelona, was always linked with the rural world, especially the town of Mont-roig del Camp, and his early works show an influence of the landscapes and characters in their summer country views in the land of Tarragona. Miró captured this relationship with the land in such paintings produced between 1918 and 1924 as Vegetable Garden with Donkey(1918) or Montroig, the church and the people(1919). The Farm was started on Miró's first trip back to Mont-roig del Camp from France, and was completed in Paris. It was a time when Miró was established in Paris and alternated with some travels, especially summers in Mont-Roig.
Dona i Ocell (1983)
Dona i Ocell (Catalan: [ˈdɔnə j uˈseʎ]; "Woman and Bird") is a 22-metre high sculpture by Joan Miró located in the Joan Miró Park in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The sculpture was covered in tiles by the artist's collaborator Joan Gardy Artigas. The sculpture is part of an artwork trilogy commissioned from Miró to welcome visitors to Barcelona.
The concrete structure was formally opened in 1982 or 1983 (sources vary) and it was one of Joan Miró's last large sculptures which he constructed with the help of his friend and collaborator Joan Gardy Artigas. Miró was not able to attend the opening as he was too ill and he died less than a year later.
The Hope of a Condemned Man (1974)
The Hope of a Condemned Man is a series of three paintings by Joan Miró in 1974 which are now part of the permanent collection of the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona.
During the last years of Francoist Spain there were some controversial legal decisions that shocked the painter. Miró painted this triptych in reference to the hope of grace as he prayed for the life of the young anarchist Salvador Puig Antich finally executed by garotte.
The Caress of a Bird (1967)
The Caress of a Bird (correctly La Caresse d'un oiseau) is a 1967 sculpture by Joan Miró made at his studio in Palma de Mallorca. It is part of the permanent collection of the Miró Foundation in Barcelona.
The origins of this sculpture are in the early object-sculptures the artist made in Mont-roig del Camp with found objects. The objects found were gathered at his workshop and then shaped into the artist's new world. At first, the objects were not placed in the right place; once the creation started there was a rigorous evaluation of their position by the artist. During the Second World War, Miró was alone in his ancestral home and landscape in Mont-roig del Camp. He was excluded from his artistic peers and the influence of art galleries, museums and exhibitions. He extracted natural forms and elements into a new artistic language of found object art. Joan Prats, Miró's lifelong friend and collaborator said: "When I take a stone, it is just a stone. When Miró grabs a stone, it is a Miró." In the mid 60s it was realised that the original sculpture was deteriorating and it was re-created in bronze by founders in Paris. Miró himself supervised the texture and controlled patina which he considered to be very important.
Portrait of Vincent Nubiola (1917)
Portrait of Vincent Nubiola (Catalan: Retrat de Vicenç Nubiola) is an oil painting by Spanish artist Joan Miró. Painted in 1917 when Miró was 24 years old, a year before his first exhibition, the portrait is now considered a masterpiece from a period when he experimented with both Cubism and Fauvism. It is also said by some art critics to show the influence of Van Gogh. Acquired for a time by Picasso, the painting is now in the permanent collection of the Folkwang Museum in Essen (Germany).
Miró showed an early passion for art, and attended drawing classes while he was at primary school, but he had been heading for a career in banking when he had a nervous breakdown and decided to study art. He met Vicenç Nubiola whilst studying life art at Barcelona's Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc, a catholic-inspired art society, in 1913. Nubiola was a professor of agriculture at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. At the art society Miró also met Joan Prats, who became one of his lifelong friends and eventually helped Miró to build his foundation. Miró painted the Nubiola portrait during 1917 and shortly after. It was included in his first solo exhibition, at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, catalogue number 46.
Constellations (Miró) (1940)
The Constellations are a series of 23 paintings on paper produced from January 1940 to September 1941 by the Spanish surrealist Joan Miró. Art historians and museum curators have said of the paintings: "Universally considered one of the greatest achievements of his career", "The Constellations, as a group and singly, are among the miracles that art occasionally bestows", "masterpiece of world painting", "perhaps the most intricate, most elaborately developed of all Miró's compositions", "genuine masterpieces", "one of the most brilliant episodes of his career", and "As an optical experience the Constellations are entirely unprecedented, having no forerunners even in Miró's own work".
"In sum, given that music, nature, and life itself are the artist's sources of inspiration"; the paintings boldly celebrate nocturnal themes of wonder, joy, nature, love, and escape, although they were painted during one of the most troubled periods of the artist life. Initiated only months after the violence and chaos of the Spanish Civil War in his homeland while Miró was exiled in France; and later completed after retreating back to an uncertain reception in fascist Spain, as the Nazis invaded France. Exhibiting the paintings in fascist Spain or occupied France were not viable options, so the series was discreetly exported to the USA in 1944 and first exhibited in New York City at the closing of the Second World War in 1945. The exhibition appeared as a revelation to an apprehensive, exiled faction of the European avant-garde and intellectuals as the first indication concerning the status of art in Europe during World War II. André Breton wrote that it was "the note of wild defiance of the hunter expressed by the grouse's love song" At the same time they were a direct influence on an emerging generation of abstract expressionist artists, particularly Jackson Pollock and the "all-over" aesthetic.
Miró Wall (1979)
The Miró Wall is a ceramic tiled wall designed by Spanish artist Joan Miró for the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The wall, which comprises 7,200 tiles, is 55 metres (180 ft) wide and 10 metres (33 ft) high.
The elements in the mural are colorful and fanciful creatures. The 55 by 10 metres (180 ft × 33 ft) mural was produced by Joan Gardy Artigas. He created the 7,200 tiles based on a design by Miró involving surreal figures and animals. Artigas had to work from an image which Miró had created at one-tenth the scale of the finished wall. Using that model, he marked out each section on an individual 20 by 36 centimetres (7.9 in × 14.2 in) tile. The artwork was completed in 1979 and includes the signatures of both artists at the bottom, left-hand corner. Miró's signature is undated; Artigas' signature is dated 1979.
Hands Flying off Toward the Constellations (1974)
Hands Flying off Toward the Constellations is a painting by Joan Miró dated 19 January 1974. It is now shown at the Fundació Joan Miró, in Barcelona. The artist gave the work to the Foundation in the same month that it opened to the public on 10 June 1975.
Rosa Maria Malet says of these works: The painting has the distinctive features of recent works by Miró, where there is abundant use of black and a considerable reduction of other colors in proportion to the black. This together with the apparent indifference in the application of paint on the canvas. With the appearance of dripping and splashing, this work gives great strength and aggressiveness. Aggressive, but there is more in form than content. These works should not be interpreted as a cry of protest, but as a sincere and spontaneous manifestation of feelings of the artist.
The Navigator's Hope (1968)
The Navigator's Hope is a series of paintings made by Joan Miró between 1968 and 1973, half of which now belong to the permanent collection of the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, thanks to a donation by Pilar Juncosa. The rest of the series are preserved in various private collections.
The series The navigator's hope does not appear to have a direct connection with the life of the artist.
His Majesty the King (Miró) (1974)
His Majesty the King is a sculpture-object made by Joan Miró in 1974. It is held at collection of the Fundació Joan Miró, in Barcelona.
Miró lived to see the fall of the Falange regime after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, along with the transition to democracy in Spain.