Joan Miró was a restless jack-of-all-trades, a fiery pioneer of Modernism, constantly seeking new artforms which were brought to life with hard work and fantasy in new pictures, wall hangings, graphic arts, and sculptures. Pablo Picasso extolled his fellow countryman as his legitimate successor and a great door-opener.
(...) Continue readingJoan Miró – Studies at Escola de la Llotja and the Academia Galf
Joan Miró was born on 20 April 1893 in Barcelona. The son of a goldsmith and watchmaker, he discovered his artistic talent at an early age, but completed a business apprenticeship on the insistence of his father. Alongside, Miró took art lessons at the La Llotja academy in Barcelona where Pablo Picasso had studied nine years earlier and where one of his teachers was the painter and comedy writer Modest Urgell. Following an illness, Miró gave up his job as a bookkeeper and was permitted by his family to attend Francesc Galí’s private art school. Galí was an engaged patron who attested to his great talent and introduced him to the art of Antoni Gaudí and Catalan Modernism, among others. Miró also studied the works of artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Legér and Marie Laurencin and took further drawing tuition in the Cercle Artistic de Sant Lluc.
Exploration of Dadaism, Fauvism and Cubism
Thanks to the financial intervention of Joan Miró’s father, he only had to serve a limited military service, but still found the start of his artistic career difficult. He felt that the creative means available to him were too limited to give his aspirations the longed-for expression. This discontent, however, also made the artist receptive to new ideas which he eagerly absorbed: Francis Picabia informed him about Dadism in his magazine 391, and he was first confronted with Surrealism through the picture stories of Guillaume Apollinaire; he was also close to Fauvism and Cubism and admired Gustave Courbet’s radical concepts. Miró made friends with the French painter and sculptor André Masson and often spent time in Paris, where he made the acquaintances of the writers Tristan Tzara, Max Jacob and Pierre Reverdy. Despite growing success, he deliberately chose a simple, modest lifestyle.
Great successes as a productive and versatile artist
Joan Miró processed a range of influences and materials and cultivated regular contact with the great artistic personalities of his time; as well as Picasso, he was friends with Louis Aragon, Hans Arp, André Breton, Paul Élouard, Michel Leiris and René Magritte, among others, and particularly close to Alexander Calder and Alberto Giacometti. He produced illustrations for writings by Henry Miller, enthused Ernest Hemingway with his art, and held very successful exhibitions in renowned locations such as Galerie Pierre in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After the Second World War, he tried his hand as a ceramic artist, and during a stay in the USA, met Jackson Pollock and Clement Greenberg. Joan Miró was highly productive into old age, always driven by the concern that his legacy might be forgotten.
Joan Miró died on 25 December 1983 in Palma.
Joan Miró - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz: