Joan Miró Ferra was born on April 20, 1893, in Barcelona. At the age of 14, he went to business school in Barcelona and also attended La Lonja, the academy of fine arts, 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. In 1917, he met Francis Picabia and the following year, the dealer José Dalmau gave him his first solo show at his gallery in Barcelona.
n 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 organized 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 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.
Miró’s first major museum retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941. That year, 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. In 1958, Miró was given a Guggenheim International Award for his 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 retrospective took place at the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1974. In 1978, the Musée National d’Art Moderne exhibited over 500 works in a major retrospective of his drawings. Miró died on December 25, 1983, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
Biography from Guggenheim Museums
Note: All works © 2025 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
This is part 1 of a 13-part series on the works of Joan Miró:
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| 1914 Pitcher oil on canvas 47.5 x 36.5 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1914 Mas d'en Poca oil on canvas 47 x 60 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1916 Mont-roig, the beach oil on canvas 37 x 45.5 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1917 Untitled (Seated nude) pastel on paper 59.5 x 43.4 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1917 Street in Pedralbesn pastel, Indian ink and graphite pencil on paper 55.6 x 44.3 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1917 Siurana, the village oil on canvas 49 x 39 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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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 Prades, a street oil on canvas 49 x 59 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1917 Portrait of Enric Cristòfol Ricart oil and pasted paper on canvas 81.6 x 65.7 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1917 Man with a Moustache pencil on paper 27.3 x 23.2 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1917 Chapel of Sant Joan d'Horta oil on cardboard Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1918 The House with the Palm Tree oil on canvas 65 x 73 cm Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía |
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| 1918 Portrait of Joaneta Obrador oil on canvas 69.5 x 62 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1919 Village and church of Mont-roig oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1919 Portrait of a young girl oil on paper on canvas 35 x 27 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1920 Horse, Pipe and Red Flower oil on canvas 82.6 × 74.9 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1921 Still Life: Glove and Newspaper oil on canvas 116.8 x 89.5 cm MoMA 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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| 1921-22 The Ear of Grain oil on canvas 37.8 x 46 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1923 Still Life 1 oil on canvas 37.8 x 46 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1923 Still Life 2 oil on canvas 38.1 x 45.7 cm MoMA 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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| 1923-24 The Hunter (Catalan Landscape) oil on canvas 64.8 x 100.3 cm MoMA 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 The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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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 The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1924 The Family charcoal, chalk, and conté crayon on flocked paper 74.3 x 102.9 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1924 Painting (The bottle of wine) oil on canvas 73.5 x 65.5 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1924 Maternity oil on canvas 92 x 73 cm Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, UK |
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| 1925 Personage oil (and egg tempera?) on canvas 130.2 x 96.5 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| 1925 Painting oil on canvas 114.5 x 145.7 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| 1925 Painting oil on canvas 73 x 100 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1925 Painting (The white glove) oil on canvas 133 x 89.5 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1925 Head of a Catalan Peasant oil on canvas 92.4 x 73 cm Tate & National Galleries of Scotland |
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| 1925 Dancer oil on canvas 115.5 x 88.5 cm Galerie Rosengart, Lucerne, Switzerland |
1925 The Policeman
In The Policeman, a large canvas from this group, two biomorphic shapes spring to life as a policeman and a horse, their forms defined by thinly applied white paint against a neutral ocher ground. The form on the left has sprouted five buds that act as fingers, and both forms extrude curves that suggest torsos or mouths. With sketch-like dots and squiggles added to their heads to make eyes and a mustache, Miró’s shapes come to life in a liquid space as animated equivalents of a policeman and his horse.
Art Institute of Chicago
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| 1925 The Policeman oil on canvas 248 x 194.9 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1925 The music-hall usher oil on canvas 100 x 78 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
1925 The Birth of the World
Joan Miró said that The Birth of the World depicts “a sort of genesis”—the amorphous beginnings of life. To make this work, Miró poured, brushed, and flung paint on an unevenly primed canvas so that the paint soaked in some areas and rested on top in others. Atop this relatively uncontrolled application of paint, he added lines and shapes he had previously planned in studies. The bird or kite, shooting star, balloon, and figure with white head may all seem somehow familiar, yet their association is illogical.
MoMa, New York
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| 1925 The Birth of the World oil on canvas 250.8 x 200 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1925-27 Painting oil on canvas 49 x 60 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1926 The Statue conté crayon on paper 61.9 x 47 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1926 Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird oil on canvas 73.7 x 92.1 cm MoMA New York |
1926-27 Cadavre Exquis
Surrealist artists played a collaborative, chance-based parlor game, typically involving four players, called Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse). Each participant would draw an image (or, on some occasions, paste an image down) on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal their contribution, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.
Taking turns adding onto each other’s drawings and collages resulted in fantastic composite figures, such as Nude by Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Max Morise, and Man Ray. The resulting nude female figure combines a humorous and absurd array of features—from leaf ears to snowshoe feet. For the Surrealists, Exquisite Corpse was a perfect parlor game, involving elements of unpredictability, chance, unseen elements, and group collaboration—all in service of disrupting the waking mind’s penchant for order.
MoMA, New York
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| 1926-27 Cadavre Exquis with Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Max Morise, Man Ray composite drawing of ink, pencil, and coloured pencil on paper 35.9 x 22.9 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1927 Untitled oil on canvas 73 x 100 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1927 Painting tempera and oil paint on canvas 97.2 x 130.2 cm Tate, UK |
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| 1927 Painting oil on canvas 22 x 27 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1927 Painting (The Circus Horse) oil and tempera on canvas 24.2 x 33 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1927 Landscape (The Hare) oil on canvas 129.6 x 194.6 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York |
1928 Dutch Interior (I)
Dutch Interior (I) is based on a seventeenth–century painting by Hendrick Martensz Sorgh depicting a lute player in a domestic interior. Miró bought a postcard reproduction of the work at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam a few months prior to beginning his painting. "I had the postcard pinned up on my easel while I painted," Miró reported. In bold, flat colors that rejected the naturalistic modeling and perspective of seventeenth–century Dutch painting, Miró greatly accentuated some elements of Sorgh’s composition, the lute and the man’s head and ruffled collar in particular, while diminishing others.
MoMA, New York
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| 1928 Dutch Interior (I) oil on canvas 91.8 x 73 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1928 Composition with Foot black chalk, over graphite, on cream wove paper 48.4 x 61.3 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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