About
Joan Miró

Joan Miró i Ferrà was born in 1893 in Barcelona. He was a painter, graphic artist, sculptor, and ceramicist. Miró began sketching at a very young age. His father, however, was opposed to the arts, and so Miró began an apprenticeship in business management. At the same time, however, he visited “La Llotja”, the academy of the arts where Picasso’s father had taught and Picasso himself had studied, until 1910.

From 1910 until 1911, Miró worked as an accountant for a drug store. In this year, however, he suffered a nervous breakdown (and fell ill with typhus), causing him to pack up and move to the country, where he ended up pursuing the arts after all.

In the following years, Miró visited several art schools and drawing academies, and he also learned much about the works of French artists as well as those of Gaudí.

In February 1918, Miró’s first solo exhibition started: 60 scenery paintings and still lives were presented.

From 1919 onward, Miró was drawn to Paris, where he met Picasso and Hemingway and joined the surrealists in 1924. He worked with artists such as Max Ernst and René Magritte, got Dalí to join the surrealists, and became friends with Alexander Calder.

In 1956, he moved his permanent residence to Mallorca, where he mainly pursued sculpting.

In 1971, Miró initiated the beginnings of the first foundation in Barcelona, followed by the second in 1981 on Mallorca. He justified the second location and its setup with the following words: “I hope no-one will ever get the idea to build one of those hideous sky scrapers in this place someday, as they already surround me everywhere else…”. It was his response to the booming Mallorca tourism.

Miró died on December 25th, 1983, aged 90 years, on Mallorca.