JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ, a life story

Like the preceding projects on César Manrique and William Turner, the project dedicated to Joan Miró will be primarily about understanding his creative process and subsequently interpreting this understanding through the individual work of each participant. It’s not about imitating the final appearance of Miróesque paintings/objects, because that’s impossible and we would look ridiculous.

Miró employed symbolism in various forms throughout his life – stars/constellations, birds, women, erotic elements, references to primitive art, and references to calligraphy. A star drawn with four lines is considered a typical Miró logo. He himself said of his work that the pure line, the form, was primary for him: ‘If I achieve the correct initial form, everything is on the right track. The colors will come of their own accord…’

He was a highly versatile artist who explored a wide range of artistic styles – Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism, dream painting, and action painting (abstract expressionism). Until the end of his life, he experimented with new artistic techniques. He often drew inspiration from nature, collecting artifacts that filled his studio (‘my garden’), and was inspired by poetry and music. He collaborated intensely with masters of other crafts, creating joint works with them (printers, poets, ceramicists, architects, carpenters, weavers, etc.). His works, which can be found in various forms such as paintings, graphics, ceramics, sculptures, tapestries, set designs, and collages, often expressed a sense of Catalan pride.

 

Brief Biography

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ was born on April 20, 1893, into an old Catalan family in Barcelona’s Barri Gòtic neighborhood. His father was a watchmaker and goldsmith, and his mother came from Mallorca. Despite his son’s clear inclination towards drawing (he began attending drawing classes at a private school at the age of seven), his father insisted that Joan receive a standard education and profession. From 1907, he therefore became a student at a business school, and at the age of seventeen, he started working as a clerk in the office of a trading company. At the same time, however, he began attending the Escuela de Bellas Artes, where his teacher was Francesc d’Assís Galí, and where Pablo Picasso had also studied twelve years earlier. Because he suffered a serious nervous breakdown the following year – the first of his recurring depressions – his father sent him to recuperate at their country estate in Mont-roig del Camp. It was then that he definitively decided to become a painter and finally found agreement with his father. His stay at the estate inspired many of Miró’s early paintings of the Catalan landscape from the Fauvist and Cubist periods, and he returned there repeatedly throughout his life.

Early Years – Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism

Miró’s early works, like those of similarly influenced Fauvists and Cubists, were inspired by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne. The work *The Farm* was later purchased by Ernest Hemingway, who described it as follows: ‘It has in it all that you feel about Spain when you are there and all that you feel when you are away and cannot go there.’ He held his first solo exhibition in 1918 at the Galerias Dalmau. In March 1919, he traveled to Paris for the first time, but this visit was not successful, as the sale of his paintings in Paris was even worse than at home, and he therefore lived in great poverty. However, he met Pablo Picasso, who became his friend and advisor and supported him in his artistic endeavors.

In 1923, he went to Paris again. Meeting André Breton, Paul Eluard, and Louis Aragon, who were giving rise to Surrealism at that time, was fateful for Miró. Miró embraced the idea of Surrealism in his work with enthusiasm. However, where other Surrealists used visions, dreams, hallucinations, hysteria, and madness to penetrate the depths of the subconscious, Miró allowed himself to be guided by his imagination, often induced by hunger (he was again financially struggling and had to live very frugally and ascetically). Despite the Surrealist automatic techniques, sketches show that his work was often the result of a methodical process.

In Paris, under the influence of poets and writers, he developed his unique style: organic forms and flattened picture planes drawn with sharp lines. Miró: ‘How did I come up with my drawings and ideas for painting? I would come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I’d go to bed, and sometimes I hadn’t even had dinner. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling…’

Abstraction, Dream Paintings, Graphics

Around 1925-26, a turning point finally occurred in his financial situation – he slowly began to sell his works. By simplifying the structures of the painting, Miró entered, alongside his Surrealist works, a period of so-called dream paintings. He even suppressed symbols, created a new style of abstraction, and described his dreams. His paintings began to express the tension of mysterious cosmic events, encounters of forms, dances in the uncontrollable forces of nature.

On October 12, 1929, Miró married Pilar Juncosa, from an old Mallorcan family. They settled in Paris on rue Mouthon, and two years after their wedding, their only child, Dolores, was born. During this happy period, Miró created a large number of paintings, and a new content with erotic undertones appeared. He also began to express himself through other materials. He rejected pure abstraction without relation to reality and

parted ways with Surrealism because he wanted to maintain his creative freedom and did not want to participate in political overlaps (even though the spiritual father of Surrealism, André Breton, declared his style to be the most Surrealist of all Surrealists).

In 1930, he created his first graphic works, a series of lithographs. He also engaged in other graphic techniques, such as drypoint, etching, aquatint, woodcut, and linocut. The political situation in Spain began to change, and the painter reacted to political events with his work. His canvases became filled with monsters rendered in jarring colors against black or red skies, depicting conflicts and the absurdity of war. He often expressed violence symbolically; cut fingernails, old toothbrushes, rusty chains, springs, and tangled ropes appeared in his paintings.

Developments Around World War II, Constellations, Ceramics

At the outbreak of World War II, Miró moved from Spain to Normandy. There, he created a unique series of small gouaches on paper called *Constellations*, in which he sought to find certainty, threatened by the war, in the harmony of symbols. In 1941, his first retrospective exhibition was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, along with the publication of the first comprehensive monograph on his work. Miró returned to New York in 1947 and spent eight months there. His work generated considerable acclaim, and he was commissioned to create large-scale murals. Over the following years, he also created large ceramic mosaic walls for various buildings in the USA, Europe, and Japan. His monumental sculptures are located in cities such as Paris, Chicago, Houston, and Barcelona.

Miró’s Legacy

Analysis of personal texts written by Joan Miró has revealed that he experienced several episodes of depression during his lifetime. There is a clear connection between his mental health and his paintings, as he used painting as a way to cope with these depressions. Joan Miró said that without painting, he was overcome by “black thoughts” and did not know what to do with himself. The influence of his mental state is very evident in the painting *Harlequin’s Carnival*. He attempted to paint the chaos he was experiencing in his mind, the desperation of wanting to leave that chaos behind, and the pain that arose from it. Miró painted a symbol of a ladder here, which is also visible in many of his other paintings. It is meant to symbolize escape.

In the last decades of his life, Miró accelerated his work with various artistic techniques and also produced hundreds of ceramic works, including the *Wall of the Moon* and *Wall of the Sun* at the UNESCO building in Paris. In 1979, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Barcelona. During his lifetime, he donated a collection of his works to Barcelona, which became the foundation of the Fundació Joan Miró. The Foundation owns and gradually exhibits 180 paintings, 145 sculptures, 9 tapestries, 5,000 drawings, and the entirety of his graphic work, which amounts to nearly 2,000 pieces.

The Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona was our first destination within the project – we visited it at the end of November last year and also viewed some installations (sculptures, ceramics) in the city’s public spaces.

Project on Joan Miró

 

However, the main part of our work will take place in May on the island of Mallorca, where Joan Miró moved in 1956 and lived until his death on December 25, 1983. In Palma de Mallorca, in addition to the family villa and the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, one can also see the artist’s studio (built by his friend, the architect Josep Lluís Sert), which Miró described as his lifelong dream come true.

I am already looking forward to what will “come out” of us, because this project is probably the most difficult thing I could have chosen for the photographers within the triptych dedicated to world-renowned painters. I expect the project to conclude in the spring of 2024.

In Liberec, March 13, 2023

Compiled with the help of the publication “The Thrill of Seeing” (The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, 2014) and Wikipedia (CZ/EN)