Joan Miró

Joan Miró (1893–1983) was one of the defining artists of twentieth-century modernism. Across painting, sculpture, ceramics, drawing and printmaking, he developed a highly personal visual language of signs, stars, birds, figures and biomorphic forms, combining Surrealist ideas with a deep attachment to the landscape and culture of Catalonia.

Born in Barcelona, Miró studied at the Escola Superior d’Arts Industrials i Belles Arts before moving increasingly towards painting. In 1920 he made his first visit to Paris, where he entered a circle of poets and artists associated with Surrealism and became acquainted with figures including Pablo Picasso. Paris provided an important counterpoint to the rural landscape of Mont-roig in Catalonia, which remained one of the principal sources of his imagery throughout his life.

During the 1920s Miró moved rapidly beyond Cubism and conventional representation, developing a language in which recognisable forms were reduced to poetic signs suspended within increasingly open pictorial spaces. Although closely associated with Surrealism, he resisted being confined to any single movement and maintained an independent approach throughout his career.

His paintings, drawings and collages of the 1920s and 1930s established him internationally, while printmaking became an increasingly important part of his practice. Lithography and etching allowed Miró to explore line and colour with great freedom, and his graphic work eventually formed one of the most extensive and inventive bodies of printmaking produced by any major twentieth-century artist.

After the Second World War Miró increasingly worked on a monumental scale, producing sculpture, ceramics, tapestries and public commissions alongside painting and printmaking. His collaborations with the ceramicist Josep Llorens Artigas resulted in major ceramic murals, while later projects included monumental sculpture, tapestry and architectural commissions in Europe, the United States and Japan.

The Redfern Gallery’s connection with Miró was particularly strong through printmaking. In 1966–67, a Redfern exhibition of prints published by Maeght was accompanied by a deluxe catalogue for which Miró created an original lithograph specifically for the gallery.

A further important collaboration followed in 1979, when Redfern presented Ediciones Polígrafa, an exhibition devoted to artists published by the celebrated Barcelona print workshop. Miró created the colour lithograph used for the catalogue cover, Polígrafa XV Años, marking fifteen years of his association with the publisher. The catalogue contained original lithographs by artists including Miró, Christo, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Henry Moore, Rufino Tamayo, Antoni Tàpies, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Zao Wou-Ki. The Miró cover lithograph is recorded in both his lithographic catalogue raisonné and Patrick Cramer’s catalogue of his illustrated books.

Miró received major international recognition throughout his lifetime. Retrospectives were held at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Fondation Maeght and the National Museum of Art, Tokyo, while in 1975 the Fundació Joan Miró opened in Barcelona as a centre devoted both to his work and to contemporary art.

He died in Palma de Mallorca in 1983. His work is represented in major museum collections throughout the world, and his radical approach to imagery, colour and materials continues to exert a profound influence on modern and contemporary art.