"Wherever you are, you can find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the dragonfly. Courage consists of staying at home, close to nature, which could not care less about our disasters. Each grain of dust contains the seed of something marvelous."
-Joan Miró
Joan Miró was one of the most critically acclaimed artists of the 20th century. He pioneered the transformation of the two-dimensional picture plane into a receptacle of personal dreams and imagery, to become the century’s leading abstract surrealist in a league with Dali, the century’s leading figurative surrealist. As a painter, sculptor, ceramicist, muralist, and printmaker, he created a visual vocabulary unique in modern art.
Miró was strongly influenced by his Catalan heritage from the primary colors of local Romanesque frescoes to the curving, undulating lines and organic forms of Gaudi’s architecture. After moving to Paris in the 1920’s, he joined the Surrealists and was particularly influenced by the concept of automatism (allowing the subconscious to dictate forms) and the exploitation of accidents. His work of the 1920’s and 1930’s thrust him to the forefront of the Surrealist movement.
Miró’s signature style of combining strong primary colors with black outlining or placing those colors on earth- or sky-colored fields, and his animation of wacky, screwball characters - often bird-like - is universally recognizable. The overall effect can be of highly modernist calligraphy emanating from mysterious, primitive sources, or of a crazy, crowded world in which anything can happen at any time.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
