Spanish painter, sculptor, and ceramicist, 1893–1983
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramist from Spain. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma, Mallorca in 1981. Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism but with a personal style, sometimes also veering into Fauvism and Expressionism. He was notable for his interest in the unconscious or the subconscious mind, reflected in his re-creation of the childlike.
Portrait of Vincent Nubiola is an oil painting by Spanish artist Joan Miró. Painted in 1917 when Miró was 24 years old, a year before his first exhibition, the portrait is now considered a masterpiece from a period when he experimented with both Cubism and Fauvism. It is also said by some art critics to show the influence of Van Gogh.
This portrait has been in the permanent collection of the Folkwang Museum in Essen (Germany), since 1966 when it was purchased from the Galerie Wilhelm Großhennig in Düsseldorf. The purchase was made with the support from the state of North Rhine – Westphalia, the Westdeutsche Rundfunk, and it entered the museum with the registration number Inv. Provenance →
Miró showed an early passion for art, and attended drawing classes while he was at primary school, but he had been heading for a career in banking when he had a nervous breakdown and decided to study art. He met Vicenç Nubiola whilst studying life art at Barcelona's Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc, a catholic-inspired art society, in 1913. History →
This is one of the well-known works from Miró's early period when he experimented with a mixture of both Cubism and Fauvism. At this time he made several landscapes and portraits, such as Portrait of Enric Cristòfol Ricart also from 1917 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Description →
Head of a Catalan Peasant is an emblematic sequence of oil paintings and pencil made by Joan Miró between 1924 and 1925. Miró began this series the same year that André Breton published his Manifesto of Surrealism. The series was made partly in Paris.
The series shares the synthetic representation of the figure of a Catalan peasant, by a repetition of symbols such as the triangular head, the beard and red hat (called Barretina), all combined in one pole figure. In this group of oil paintings, Miró outlines the figure of a farmer several times, working with neutral background blue or yellow. Description →
This first version of the Catalan Peasant was painted in 1924 and is now part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It became part of the collection as a gift of the Collectors Committee of the institution. Head of a Catalan Peasant (1924) →
Is the most unknown of the series, which belongs to a private collector, but has been seen in several exhibitions: Head of a Catalan Peasant →
The Barcelona Series is a series of fifty black and white lithographs made by Joan Miró and published in 1944. They are in the collection of the Miró Foundation, in Barcelona.
The images were created between 1939 and 1944 by the artist. They were printed at Miralles, a small printer in Barcelona, in 1944, after Miró returned from his self-imposed exile in France. Provenance →
This print series can be considered a forerunner to Miró's 1941 oil series Constellations. These black and white lithographs depict deformed images of animal and human figures. Description →
The Caress of a Bird is a 1967 sculpture by Joan Miró made at his studio in Palma de Mallorca. It is part of the permanent collection of the Miró Foundation in Barcelona.
The origins of this sculpture are in the early object-sculptures the artist made in Mont-roig del Camp with found objects. The objects found were gathered at his workshop and then shaped into the artist's new world. History →
In this humorous sculpture Joan Miró uses easy to identify objects that serve as the basis of the design. The sculpture is over 3 metres (9.8 ft) tall and over 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) wide, but is only 38 cm (15 in) deep. Description →
The Hope of a Condemned Man is a series of three paintings by Joan Miró in 1974 which are now part of the permanent collection of the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona.
During the last years of Francoist Spain there were some controversial legal decisions that shocked the painter. Miró painted this triptych in reference to the hope of grace as he prayed for the life of the young anarchist Salvador Puig Antich finally executed by garotte. History →
Successive representations show a patch that changes color according to the transformation of a flowing black line with splashes of paint. The line tries to describe a form that can not be completed as it is unexpectedly interrupted. Description →
Miró painted these large scale works (as well as Bleu II) influenced under the impression that he got on his stay in the United States. Context and influences →
His Majesty the King is a sculpture-object made by Joan Miró in 1974. It is held at collection of the Fundació Joan Miró, in Barcelona.
Miró lived to see the fall of the Falange regime after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, along with the transition to democracy in Spain. History →
His Majesty the King, along with Her Majesty the Queen and His Highness the Prince are part of a series of sculptures composed—as was often the case with Miró—from found objects. The everyday origins of the items comprising the sculptures implicitly contradict the majesty of the works' titles. Description →
The exhibition L'escala de l'evasió that opened in October 2011 was supported by access to Wikipedia using QRpedia codes that allowed access to visitors in Catalan, English and several other languages. 2011 exhibition →
The Miró Wall is a ceramic tiled wall designed by Spanish artist Joan Miró for the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The wall, which comprises 7,200 tiles, is 55 metres (180 ft) wide and 10 metres (33 ft) high.
The elements in the mural are colorful and fanciful creatures. The 55 by 10 metres (180 ft × 33 ft) mural was produced by Joan Gardy Artigas. Design →
The tiles were fired in Gallifa, a village near Barcelona. They had to be transported 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) to the museum. Construction →
Dona i Ocell is a 22-metre high sculpture by Joan Miró located in the Joan Miró Park in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The sculpture was covered in tiles by the artist's collaborator Joan Gardy Artigas. The sculpture is part of an artwork trilogy commissioned from Miró to welcome visitors to Barcelona.
The work uses some of Miró's recurring themes of women and birds. In Catalan the word for a "bird" (ocell) can be used as slang for penis. Description →
The concrete structure was formally opened in 1982 or 1983 (sources vary) and it was one of Joan Miró's last large sculptures which he constructed with the help of his friend and collaborator Joan Gardy Artigas. Miró was not able to attend the opening as he was too ill and he died less than a year later. Background →
The park where the sculpture is installed covers four blocks of the Barcelona road grid near the Plaça d'Espanya. The park is a popular area to relax. The park →
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