Joan Miro

Joan Miró (April 20, 1893 – December 25, 1983) was a painter, sculptor and ceramist born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

Drawn to the artistic community gathering in Montparnasse, in 1920 he moved to Paris, where, under the influence of Surrealist poets and writers he developed his unique style. His Surrealist works are considered amongst the most original of the 20th century.

In 1926, he collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Max Ernst pioneered the technique of "grattage" in which he troweled pigment from his canvases.

Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma de Mallorca on October 12, 1929, and on July 17, 1931 the couple had a daughter, Dolores.

One of the most radical of Surrealist theorists (Surrealism founder André Breton described Miró as "the most Surrealist of us all"), Miró expressed his contempt for conventional painting, and his desire to "murder" and "assassinate" it in favor of new means of expression in numerous writings and interviews from the 1930s on.

Shuzo Takiguchi published the first monograph on Miró in 1940.

Joan Miró won the 1954 Venice Biennale printmaking prize, and in 1980 he received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos of Spain.

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. He 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.