Joan Miró

Joan Miro married Pilar Juncosa on 12 October 1929. The couple had one daughter, Dolors, born on 17 July 1931. They had a happy and stable marriage.

He lived a long life and died on 25 December 1983, at the age of 90. He suffered from heart disease.

He was born as Joan Miró i Ferrà on 20 April 1893, in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, to Miquel Miró Adzerias and Dolors Ferrà. His father was a goldsmith and watchmaker.

He loved art from a young age and started receiving drawing lessons when he was seven. Both his father’s profession and the scenic beauty of his hometown influenced his own artistic abilities.

As a young man he wanted to pursue a career as an artist much to his parents’ dismay. They wanted him to follow a more conventional career path and establish himself in a stable profession. Thus they convinced him to attend a business school following which he was appointed as a clerk.

However, he suffered a mental and physical breakdown after which he abandoned his job as a clerk. While recovering from his illness he immersed himself in art and began painting in earnest. Concerned about his health and happiness, his parents allowed him to attend art school.

One of his instructors at the art school was Francesco Galí who recognized the boy’s talents and supported him in his artistic pursuits. He helped strengthen Joan Miro’s understanding of spatial quality and exposed him to the tenets of modern art from Paris.

He held his first solo show in 1918 at the Dalmau Gallery. This show however was not well-received by the viewers and he was subjected to considerable ridicule.

During this time he became drawn to ideas of Cubism from abroad and was inspired to join the arts community that was gathering in Montparnasse, France. Thus he moved to Paris in 1920 though he continued to spend his summers in Catalonia.

’The Farm’ which he painted between the summer of 1921 and winter of 1922 was one of his earliest paintings after moving to Paris. The work is regarded as a major milestone in his career, and was purchased by the writer Ernest Hemmingway.

Joan Miro joined the Surrealist group in 1924, and increasingly began exploring symbolism though he did not completely abandon the subject matter. He created several paintings in the ‘Head of a Catalan Peasant’ series which he painted during 1924-25.

During the 1930s he became more experimental and started exploring the techniques of collage and sculptural assemblage. He also started creating sets and costumes for ballets.

One of his most significant paintings is the ‘Catalan Landscape’ (1924), in which he depicted a Catalan peasant, engaged simultaneously in the act of shooting a rabbit for his cooking pot and fishing for a sardine for his barbecue.

In the much acclaimed painting ‘Dog Barking at the Moon’ (1926), he painted a colorful dog barking at the moon. While the bright colors lend playfulness to the painting, the dark background and the vast empty spaces between the subjects produce a sense of loneliness and mystery.

His 1953 painting ‘Ladders Cross the Blue Sky in a Wheel of Fire’ is another one of his major works. The colorful painting has a cheerful and happy feel to it, and depicts the sun, moon, and stars, which the artist held in reverence.