Collection: Miro Joan

(Montroig 1893 - Palma de Mallorca 1983)

Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramist, Joan Miró is an exponent of surrealism, perhaps the most hermetic among the artists of this movement. Despite this, he has always had enormous success, perhaps because his works possess the curious characteristic of making the observer smile, motivated by the bright and cheerful colors, the strange unreal figures and in particular by his signs, which may seem at first glance to be children's scribbles. The serenity of his work is so powerful that it leads to accepting his expression even if one does not fully understand its meaning; the master seems to speak directly to the unconscious, to the deepest emotions.
Between 1912 and 1915 he attended the Academy of Francisco Galì in Barcelona (who taught him to draw by first touching objects with his eyes closed), an avant-garde academy where he became acquainted with the paintings of Monet, Van Gogh, Cézanne, the Fauves and the Cubists. In 1924 he joined the surrealist group and twenty years later he participated in the International Exhibition of Surrealism in Paris. From 1925 to 1927 his paintings became dreamlike and bare, as if freed from the force of gravity and called by the stars.
Miró's graphic work is equally important, the activity involves him to such an extent that for some years he stops painting to dedicate his heart and soul to works destined for volumes and magazines of the author. Between 1947 and 1956, in fact, he dedicates himself to lithographs and engravings and illustrates many books of poet friends (such as those of Jacques Prévert) and begins his collaboration with Maeght for Derrière le miroir .
In addition to numerous awards and two honorary degrees, in 1980 King Juan Carlos awarded Miró the Gold Medal of Fine Arts. The Joan Miró Museum in Palma de Mallorca opened ten years after his death, in his own atelier.