Joan Miró Ferra was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona. At the age of 14, he went to business school in Barcelona and also attended La Lonja’s Escuela Superior de Artes Industriales y Bellas Artes in the same city. Upon completing three years of art studies, he took a position as a clerk. After suffering a nervous breakdown, he abandoned business and resumed his art studies, attending Francesc Galí’s Escola d’Art in Barcelona from 1912 to 1915. Miró received early encouragement from the dealer José Dalmau, who gave him his first solo show at his gallery in Barcelona in 1918. In 1917 he met Francis Picabia.
In 1920 Miró made his first trip to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso. From this time, Miró divided his time between Paris and Montroig, Spain. In Paris he associated with the poets Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, and Tristan Tzara and participated in Dada activities. Dalmau organised Miró’s first solo show in Paris, at the Galerie la Licorne in 1921. His work was included in the Salon d’Automne of 1923. In 1924 Miró joined the Surrealist group. His solo show at the Galerie Pierre, Paris, in 1925 was a major Surrealist event; Miró was included in the first Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre that same year. He visited the Netherlands in 1928 and began a series of paintings inspired by Dutch masters. That year he also executed his first papiers collés (pasted papers) and collages. In 1929 he started his experiments in lithography, and his first etchings date from 1933. During the early 1930s he made Surrealist sculptures incorporating painted stones and found objects. In 1936 Miró left Spain because of the civil war; he returned in 1941. Also in 1936 Miró was included in the exhibitions Cubism and Abstract Art and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The following year he was commissioned to create a monumental work for the Paris World’s Fair.
Miró’s first major museum retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941. In 1944 Miró began working in ceramics with Josep Lloréns y Artigas and started to concentrate on prints; from 1954 to 1958 he worked almost exclusively in these two mediums. He received the Grand Prize for Graphic Work at the Venice Biennale in 1954, and his work was included in the first Documenta exhibition in Kassel the following year. In 1958 Miró was given a Guggenheim International Award for murals for the UNESCO building in Paris. The following year he resumed painting, initiating a series of mural-sized canvases. During the 1960s he began to work intensively in sculpture. Miró retrospectives took place at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1962, and the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1974. In 1978 the Musée National d’Art Moderne exhibited over five hundred works in a major retrospective of his drawings. Miró died on December 25, 1983, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
biography from Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Note: All Miro works © 2018 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
This is part-1 of a 23-part series on the works of Joan Miró:
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| 1912-13c The Farmer oil on canvas 65 x 50 cm Private Collection |
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| 1913 Night Birds gouache and graphite, with scraping, on tan wove paper 32.1 x 49.1 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1915 La Cafetière oil on board 50.8 x 55.7 cm |
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| 1916 Pot of Flowers and Lemon oil on board laid down on board 63.8 x 50.8 cm |
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| 1917 Ciurana, ( Siuriana ) the Path oil on canvas 60.6 x 73.3 cm |
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| 1917 Ciurana, ( Siuriana ) oil on canvas |
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| 1917 Paysage ( Le lièvre ) oil on canvas 129.6 x 194.6 cm Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain |
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| 1917 Portrait of Enric Cristòfol Ricart oil and pasted paper on canvas 81 . x 65.7 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| 1917 Portrait of V. Nubiola oil on canvas 104 x 113 cm Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany |
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| 1917 Prades, the Village oil on canvas 65 x 72.6 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| 1917 Seated Nude Holding a Flower oil on canvas 81.3 x 65.4 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1917 Self-Portrait oil on canvas 61 x 50 cm |
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| 1918 Juanita Obrador oil on canvas 69.5 x 62 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1918 Portrait of Heriberto Casany oil on canvas 70.2 x 62 cm Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas |
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| 1919 Lady with Hat graphite on paper 19.1 x 16.5 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1919 Nude with Mirror oil on canvas 112 x 102 cm Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf |
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| 1919 Village and Church of Mont-roig oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona |
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| 1919 Vines and Olive Trees, Tarragona oil on canvas 72.7 x 89.9 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1920 Horse, Pipe and Red Flower oil on canvas 82.6 x 74.9 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1920 The Table, called Still life with Hare ( or Rabbit ) oil on canvas 110 x 130 cm Private Collection |
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| 1921 Portrait of a Spanish Dancer oil on canvas 65 x 56 cm Musée Picasso, Paris |
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| 1921 Standing Nude oil on canvas 130 x 96 cm Peris Galleries, New York |
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| 1921-22 The Farm oil on canvas 123.8 x 141.3 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| 1922-23 Still Life I oil on canvas 37.8 x 46 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| 1922-23 The Farmer's Wife oil on canvas 81 x 65 cm Private Collection |
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| 1923-24 The Hunter ( Catalan Landscape ) oil on canvas 64.8 x 100.3 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| 1923-24 The Tilled Field oil on canvas 66 x 92.7 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| 1924 Head of a Catalan Peasant oil and crayon on canvas 146 x 114.2 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| 1924 Maternity oil on canvas 92 x 73 cm National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK |
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| 1924 Painting ( The Bottle of Wine ) oil on canvas 73.5 x 65.5 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona |
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| 1924 Somersault ( Le renversement ) oil, graphite, charcoal and tempera on canvasboard 92.4 x 72.8 cm Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT |
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| 1924 The Kerosene Lamp charcoal, with red Conté and coloured crayons, touches of graphite, and scraping, heightened with white oil paint, on canvas prepared with a glue ground 81 x 100.3 cm |
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| 1924 The Tilled Field oil on canvas 66 x 92.7 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| 1924 Viticulture black crayon and watercolour, with graphite and incising, on cream wove paper 62.9 x 48.2 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1924-25 Harlequin's Carnival oil on canvas 66 x 90.5 cm Albright Know Gallery, Buffalo, NY |
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| 1924-25 Head of a Catalan Peasant oil on canvas 47 x 44.4 cm |
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| 1925 Head of a Catalan Peasant oil oil on canvas 92 x 73.2 cm Tate, London |
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| 1925 Figure oil ( and egg tempera? ) on canvas 130 x 96.2 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| 1925 Painting ( The White Glove ) oil on canvas 113 x 89.5 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona |
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| 1925 Painting / Man with a Pipe oil on canvas 146 x 114 cm Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain |
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| 1925 Painting oil on canvas 49 x 60 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona |
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| 1925 Painting oil on canvas 73 x 100 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona |
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| 1925 Painting oil on canvas 103 x 76 cm Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, Germany |
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| 1925 Painting oil on canvas 114.5 x 145.7 cm Peggy Guggenheim Collection |
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| 1925 Photo: This is the Colour of my Dreams oil on canvas 96.5 x 129.5 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1925 The Birth of the World oil on canvas 250.8 x 200 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| 1925 The Music-Hall Usher 100 x 78 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona |
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| 1925 The Policeman oil on canvas 248 x 194.9 cm |
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| 1926 Danseuse espagnole pencil on paper 63 x 47.5 cm Galeria Marc Domenech, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1926 Dog Barking at the Moon oil on canvas 73 x 92 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1926 Painting oil on canvas 73.3 x 92.1 cm San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA |
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| 1926 Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird oil on canvas 73.7 x 92.1 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| 1926 Searching for Shelter watercolour, pen and ink on paper mounted on card 29.9 x 46.7 cm Private Collection |
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| 1926 Spanish Dancer ( Tapestry Design ) oil on paper mounted on canvas 35 x 27 cm |
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| 1926 Spanish Dancer Tapestry |
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| 1927 Animated Landscape oil on canvas 129.5 x 194.9 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1927 Circus Horse oil and tempera o canvas 24.2 x 33 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1927 Circus Horse tempera on canvas 130.5 x 97 .2 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |