Joan Miró

Overview

"You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life."

Known as an innovator in the Surrealist movement, Joan Miró was a highly creative and free-thinking individual who refused to adhere to the norms of conventional painting methods which he felt assassinated art by curbing the artist’s imagination and freedom.

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Biography

Van Vechten Collection at Library of Congress

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"My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colors. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details."

The Spanish artist Joan Miró is regarded as an innovator in the Surrealist movement, rendering the subconscious and bringing it to life in an abstract style that is instantly recognizable. This concept would later inspire Abstract Expressionists in the early 20th century. Often driven by interior emotions, spontaneity and gesture inform his works, resulting in less calculated, 'freer' works. Working in a limited color palette, Miró worked across sculpture, ceramics, works on paper, and painting.

Miró was born April 20, 1893 in Barcelona. At the age of 14, he went to business school in Barcelona and also attended La...