Joan Miró (1893-1983), Spanish painter,
whose surrealist works, with their subject matter drawn from the realm
of
memory and imaginative fantasy, are some of the most original of the
20th century.
Miró was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona
and studied at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts and the Academia
Galí. His work before 1920 shows wide-ranging influences, including
the bright colors of the Fauves, the broken
forms of cubism, and the powerful, flat two-dimensionality of Catalan
folk art and Romanesque church frescoes of
his native Spain. He moved to Paris in 1920, where, under the influence
of surrealist poets and writers, he evolved
his mature style. Miró drew on memory, fantasy, and the irrational
to create works of art that are visual analogues of
surrealist poetry. These dreamlike visions, such as Harlequin's Carnival
(1925, Albright-knox Gallery, Buffalo) or
Dutch interior (1928, Museum of Modern Art, New York City), often
have a whimsical or humorous quality,
containing images of playfully distorted animal forms, twisted organic
shapes, and odd geometric constructions.
The forms of this paintings are organized against
flat neutral backgrounds and are painted in a limited range of bright
colors, especially blue, red, yellow, green, and black. Amorphous
amebic shapes alternate with sharply drawn
lines, spots, and curlicues, all positioned on the canvas with seeming
nonchalance. Miró later produced highly
generalized, ethereal works in which his organic forms and figures
are reduced to abstract spots, lines, and bursts of
colors.
Miró also experimented in a wide array
of other media, devoting himself to etchings and lithographs for several
years
in the 1950s and also working in watercolor, pastel, collage, and
paint on copper and masonite. His ceramic
sculptures are especially notable, in particular his two large ceramic
murals for the UNESCO building in Paris
(Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun, 1957-59). Miró died
in Majorca, Spain, on December 25, 1983.
Source: Microsoft(R)
Encarta(R) 96 Encyclopedia. Copyright copy; 1996 Microsoft
Corporation
