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 3 of a 13-part series on the works of Joan Miró:
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| 1936 Two Personages in love with a woman oil on copper 26 x 34.9 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1936 Two figures and a dragonfly gouache, watercolour, and graphite on paper 41.1 x 32.2 cm Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| 1936 The Two Philosophers oil on copper 35.6 x 49.8 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1936 Painting oil, tar, casein and sand on masonite 78 x 198 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1936 Painting oil, tar, casein and sand on masonite 78 x 108 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1936 Painting oil, gravel, pebbles, and sand on Masonite 77.6 x 107.2 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1936 Painting gouche on brick 31 x 15 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1937 Study for a portrait ink on paper 64.1 x 48.6 cm MoMA New York |
1937 Still Life with Old Shoe
Miró created Still Life with Old Shoe in Paris over a four-month period of intense concentration, working from life for the first time in many years. The painting eschews simple categorization. It is both a still life and a landscape: the irregular back edge of the tabletop can be read as a horizon line. The objects are not to scale, and they are isolated in discrete cells, creating a formal rupture that calls to mind Miró’s work in collage. The color is acidic, highly saturated, and dissonant. For Miró this painting captured a "profound and fascinating reality.
Gallery label from Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting
1927—1937, November 2, 2008–January 12, 2009
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| 1937 Still life with old shoe oil on canvas 81.3 x 116,8 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1937 Standing woman oil and oil wash, with charcoal, on cream wove paper 76.7 x 57.3 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1937 Help Spain pochoir 24.8 x 19.4 cm sheet (irregular) MoMA New York |
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| 1937 Head of a man gouache and oil on coloured paper 65.4 x 50.5 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1937 Head oil, stucco, graphite pencil, screws and towel on celotex 121 x 91 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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| 1937 Group of personages watercolour and black crayon, with touches of gouache, over graphite, on cream wove paper 49.5 x 64.5 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1937-38 Self-Portrait I pencil, crayon, and oil on canvas 146.1 x 97.2 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1938 A star caresses the breast of a negress (Painting poem) oil on canvas 129.5 x 194.3 cm Tate, UK |
1938 Black and Red Series etchings:
Miró developed his Black and Red Series in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. He conceived the compositions as variants on a crowded scene in which three figures—sometimes interpreted as a mother, a daughter, and a father (a group that corresponds to Miró’s own family)—face a monstrous, long-nosed head that might symbolize General Francisco Franco, who would go on to rule as dictator for several decades. To create the prints, the artist worked with two etched copper plates, alternately inking them in red and black. He superimposed them in different combinations and positions that suggest varying degrees of tumult within an overall narrative of oppression and fear.
MoMA New York
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| Etching 16.9 x 25.7 cm (plate) |
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| Etching 25.6 x 16.8 cm (plate) |
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| Etching 16.9 x 25.8 cm (plate) |
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| Etching 16.9 x 26.7 cm (plate) |
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| Etching 16.9 x 26.7 cm (plate) |
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| Etching 16.9 x 25.8 cm (plate) |
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| Etching 25.8 x 16.7 cm (plate) |
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| Etching 25.5 x 16.5 cm (plate) |
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| 1938 Portrait of Miró etching and drypoint on white wove paper 48 x 38.3 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1938 Persons haunted by a bird gouache and black crayon, with watercolour and touches of brown crayon, over traces of charcoal, on off-white wove paper 41 x 33.1 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1938 Night Birds gouache and graphite, with scraping, on tan wove paper 32.1 x 49.1 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1938 Hourglass lying down book cover 21.4 x 16.4 cm MoMA New York |
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| 1938 Composition etching and drypoint in black on white wove paper 32.7 x 50 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1938 Woman doing her hair before a mirror crayon, oil, gouache, and graphite on paper 41 x 33 cm Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| 1938 The three sisters drypoint etching 26.5 x 19.5 cm (plate) MoMA New York |
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| 1938 The Paradise of Phantoms illustrated book with one drypoint with aquatint 16.1 x 12.5 cm (page) MoMA New York |
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| 1938 The Paradise of Phantoms drypoint with aquatint book illustration The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1938 The Giantess drypoint in black on ivory wove paper 34.5 x 23.8 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1938 The wakening of the giant drypoint etching 26.8 x 23.7 cm (plate) MoMA New York |
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| 1939 Fraternity etching from an illustrated book with eight engravings 14.8 x 9.1 cm (plate) |
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| 1939 The flight of a bird over the plain III oil on burlap 89.5 x 115.6 cm Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| 1939 Seated woman II oil on canvas oil on canvas 162 x 130 cm Guggenheim Museum, New York |
1941 Ciphers and Constellations
In January 1940, he began a series of twenty-three works on paper that later became known as The Constellations, of which this is an example. Composed on identically sized sheets of paper over twenty-one months, this remarkably poetic suite was created from January 1940 to September 1941, under the duress of World War II, when Miró and his family moved from France to his native Spain to avoid the advance of the Nazis. About the “Constellations” he stated: “If the interplay of lines and colours does not expose the inner drama of the creator, then it is nothing more than bourgeois entertainment. The forms expressed by an individual who is part of society must reveal the movement of a soul trying to escape the reality of the present… . in order to approach new realities, to offer men the possibility of rising above the present.”
Art Institute of Chicago, IL
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| 1941 Ciphers and constellations in love with a woman opaque watercolor with watercolour washes on ivory, rough textured wove paper 45.9 x 38 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1940 The escape ladder (from the Constellation series) gouache, watercolour, and ink on paper 40 x 47.6 cm MoMA New York |
1941 The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers
This is one of a celebrated group of twenty-four drawings, collectively referred to as the Constellation series, which was executed during a period of personal crisis for Miró triggered by the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Trapped in France from 1936 to 1940, the artist embarked on these obsessively meticulous works on paper in an attempt to commune with nature and escape the tragedies of current events. Despite their modest formats, they represented the most important works of his career up to that time, a fact he quickly realised.
The first eleven works in the series were executed in Normandy between December 1939 and May 1940. Although the motifs throughout correspond to Miró's classic repertory, in the earlier works the washed grounds are more saturated, the motifs larger, and the compositions looser than in those that would follow. In the later thirteen works, executed in Palma de Mallorca in 1940–41, of which The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers is exemplary, the grounds are almost opalescent, and the familiar motifs are smaller and tightly woven into a continuous linear web. In its elusive poetry yet rigorous control, this work not only embodies Miró's artistic personality, but it also mirrors the luminous tracks of constellations in a clear night sky.
MoMA New York
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| 1941 The Beautiful Bird revealing the unknown to a Pair of Lovers gouache, oil wash, and charcoal on paper 45.7 x 38.1 cm MoMA New York |
1941 Ciphers and Constellations
In January 1940, he began a series of twenty-three works on paper that later became known as The Constellations, of which this is an example. Composed on identically sized sheets of paper over twenty-one months, this remarkably poetic suite was created from January 1940 to September 1941, under the duress of World War II, when Miró and his family moved from France to his native Spain to avoid the advance of the Nazis. About the “Constellations” he stated: “If the interplay of lines and colors does not expose the inner drama of the creator, then it is nothing more than bourgeois entertainment. The forms expressed by an individual who is part of society must reveal the movement of a soul trying to escape the reality of the present… . in order to approach new realities, to offer men the possibility of rising above the present.”
Art Institute of Chicago, IL
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| 1941 Ciphers and Constellations in Love with a Woman opaque watercolor with watercolour washes on ivory, rough textured wove paper 45.9 x 38 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1942 Figures in front of the Sun charcoal pencil, gouache, Indian ink and pastel on paper 103 x 60 cm Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain |
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