Joan Miró – The Catalan artistic genius for young and old

Children love Miró, and adults who have retained a childlike immediacy and curiosity in their reception of visual language love him too. Joan Miró painted many pictures that simply lift the spirits, even though (or perhaps precisely because) he had to fight hard for his artistic career.

Joàn Miró was born in Barcelona in 1893, the son of a craftsman . His lower-middle-class family initially resisted the young Joàn's artistic ambitions. He was forced to complete a commercial apprenticeship and work as an accountant; only a nervous breakdown combined with a bout of typhoid fever prompted his family to reconsider.

In 1912, Miro was allowed to enroll at the private art school Escola d'Art run by the progressive Francesc Galí, which he attended from 1912 to 1915. Galí introduced his, in his opinion, highly gifted student to modern French art and acquainted him with the architecture of Antoni Gaudí .

In the same year, Miró also became acquainted with the works of the Cubists (Marcel Duchamp, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Marie Laurencin, Jean Metzinger, and Fernand Léger). Simultaneously, until 1918, Miró also attended the free drawing academy “Cercle Artistic de Sant Lluc,” which was rather reserved towards the avant-garde. At times, Miró despaired of this conflict in his work: “Sometimes, in despair as I was, I banged my head against the wall,” he was later quoted as saying about this period.

But as early as 1915, Miró set up his first studio in Barcelona together with EC Ricart; from 1916 onwards, he was supported by the art dealer Josep Dalmau; in 1917, Francis Picabia introduced him to the circle of Dadaists .

In 1918, Miró had his first solo exhibition at the Galerías Dalmau in Barcelona; he then founded an artists' group together with Ricart, Francesc Domingo, JF Ràfols and Rafael Sala, which was named after the progressive Gustave Courbet and wanted to emulate him.

The joint exhibitions showcased highly vibrant and colorful works , but were not very successful. In 1918, Miró traveled to Paris , where he to Pablo Picasso . At the end of 1920, he established a studio in Paris, and in 1921 he had his first solo exhibition there, which was also not very successful.

During this time, Hemingway also bought a painting by Miró, who had by then joined the Surrealists but remained a quiet outsider among them. However, he exhibited with the Surrealists in 1925, simultaneously holding his second solo exhibition, and in 1926 was allowed to collaborate with Max Ernst on the stage design and costumes for Diaghilev's ballet Romeo and Juliet ; he was gradually becoming more and more well-known.

When he moved into a studio in Montmartre in 1927, René Magritte , Hans Arp, Max Ernst, and Paul Éluard were his neighbors. In 1928, he also met the sculptors Alexander Calder and Alberto Giacometti, who would remain lifelong friends and influence his work. In 1929, at Miró's suggestion, Salvador Dalí joined the Surrealist group in Paris; in the same year, Miró married and became a father to a daughter in 1931.

Miró now definitively turned away from conventional painting, which had found its place in the upper-middle-class living room as a purchased but unconsidered status symbol. This not only influenced his choice of subjects and materials, but also clearly demonstrates Miró's rebellious attitude towards commercialized art when he speaks of the "assassinat de la peinture" (the "murder of painting").

The next major exhibition wasn't until 1936, in which Miró was shown alongside such luminaries as Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Hans Arp, Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, and Meret Oppenheim. Shortly thereafter, he was able to participate in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and in an international Surrealist exhibition in London.

Things started looking up for Miró. In 1937, he was commissioned to create a monumental painting and an exhibition poster for the Spanish pavilion at the World's Fair in Paris. In 1938, he participated in the "Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme" at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris. When France was occupied by German troops in 1940, Miró returned to his birthplace in Spain and worked there.

From 1944 onwards, he produced ceramic works together with the Catalan ceramicist Josep Llorens i Artigas. In 1947, Miró was invited to the United States, where he designed a mural for a hotel in Cincinnati; at the same time, his paintings were shown at a Surrealist exhibition in Paris.

In 1948 he returned to Paris, where his ceramic sculptures were being exhibited, and spent several busy years there.

In 1956, Miró retreated to Palma de Mallorca and spent the following years primarily working on sculptures. He continued to work for and in America on several occasions until 1960, and in 1968 his 75th birthday was celebrated with an exhibition and numerous tributes.

Then came his final period, a time of anger, in which he resisted being co-opted by Franco's authorities and the commercialization of his works by designers and poster artists.

The “murder of painting” reached its peak in 1973 with the five-part series “Burnt Canvases” , in which Miró cut out entire surfaces with a blowtorch.

When asked about the motive for the brutal violence, Miró later said: “… the real reason was that I simply wanted to indulge myself in shouting ‘Shit!’ at the people who see art solely in its commercial value – all those who believe and claim that their works are worth a fortune.”

Concerned about his creative legacy, he was also affected by the lively construction activity that was increasingly disfiguring Mallorca with the influx of tourists, so he initially donated part of his property to the city administration of Palma, which in 1981 became a foundation, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró a Mallorca.

As early as 1971, Miró initiated the founding of his first foundation, which opened in Barcelona in 1975 under the name Fundació Joan Miró. Joan Miró was still able to experience the exhibitions, publications, and tributes with which he celebrated his 90th birthday worldwide in April 1983, before his death in Palma de Mallorca in December 1983.

In his long and eventful life, Miró created an incredible number of works : around 2000 oil paintings , about 500 sculptures and approximately 400 ceramics are complemented by around 5000 collages and drawings and a graphic oeuvre of about 3500 works.

Joàn Miró not only painted, he created “picture poems”, beautiful and enigmatic and full of symbols such as flowers and snails, women and stars.

For Miró, these symbols represent the essential areas of cosmos and man, flora and fauna, with which he had been preoccupied throughout his life.

The fight against commercialization didn't quite work out: Miró's "Étoile Bleue" was auctioned for 29 million euros at Sotheby's in London in June 2012, thus ranking among the 50 most expensive paintings in the world.