Joan Miró

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Miró was born into a family of a goldsmith and watchmaker, Miquel Miró Adzerias, and mother Dolores Ferrà, growing up in the Barri Gòtic neighborhood of Barcelona. He began drawing classes at age seven at a private school at Carrer del Regomir 13. To the dismay of his father, he enrolled at the fine art academy at La Llotja in 1907. He studied at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc and had his first solo show in 1918 at the Galeries Dalmau, where his work was ridiculed and defaced. Inspired by Fauve and Cubist exhibitions, he moved to Paris in 1920 but continued to spend summers in Catalonia. He initially went to business school as well as art school, and began working as a clerk as a teenager, but abandoned business completely after suffering a nervous breakdown. His early art was inspired by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, leading scholars to dub this period his Catalan Fauvist period. In 1924, Miró joined the Surrealist group. He married Pilar Juncosa in Palma, Mallorca on 12 October 1929; their daughter María Dolores Miró was born on 17 July 1930. During the Spanish Civil War, he was unable to return home, and in 1937 he painted The Reaper mural for the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exhibition. In 1940–41, he created the twenty-three gouache series Constellations. In 1974, he created a tapestry for the World Trade Center with Josep Royo, lost in the September 11 attacks. In 1981, his sculpture Miró's Chicago was unveiled in the downtown Loop area of Chicago.

Reader's Guide

Miró's significance lies in his role as a Surrealist who developed a highly personal style, often re-creating the childlike to explore the unconscious or subconscious mind. He expressed contempt for conventional painting methods, which he saw as supporting bourgeois society, and declared an 'assassination of painting' in favor of upsetting the visual elements of established painting. His work also contains manifestations of Catalan pride. In 1975, a museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona, with another opened in 1981 in his adoptive city of Palma, Mallorca. He received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Barcelona in 1979. He died in his home in Palma de Mallorca on 25 December 1983 at age 90 and was interred in the Montjuïc Cemetery in Barcelona. Miró suffered from episodic depression throughout his life, experiencing his first depression at age 18 in 1911; he said, 'I was demoralized and suffered from a serious depression. I fell really ill, and stayed three months in bed.' He used painting as a way of dealing with depression, stating that without it he became 'very depressed, gloomy and I get "black ideas", and I do not know what to do with myself.'

Did You Know?

• Miró's first solo show in 1918 at the Galeries Dalmau was ridiculed and defaced.
• Ernest Hemingway purchased Miró's painting The Farm, 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.'
• Miró created a tapestry for the World Trade Center in 1974 with Josep Royo, which was lost in the September 11 attacks.
• Miró suffered his first serious depression at age 18 in 1911 and stayed in bed for three months.
• He created the twenty-three gouache series Constellations between 1940 and 1941, which inspired André Breton to write a series of poems seventeen years later.