Joan Miro I Ferra Biography | Oil Paintings

“The train does not stop.” Joan Miro i Ferra found a rusty, old railroad sign with these words written on it in a dump and hung it on the wall of his studio, as a kind of self-imposed “program”. The life and work of this Catalan artist were marked by his unstoppable creativity and extraordinary ability to invent colorful images teeming with life. Although he was in contact with various artistic currents and Avante-Garde movements (especially surrealism), Miro remained an individual painter.

Joan Miro i Ferra was a painter, ceramist, and graphic artist; a key member of the Surrealists. Miro trained under Francisco Gali. His early work showed traces of Fauvism and Cubism, but his first one-man show was a disaster. Undeterred, Joan Miro i Ferra decided to travel to Paris, the acknowledged home of the avant-garde.

He left Catalonia for a long stay in Paris in 1919 where he came in contact with members of the various avant-garde movements, including fellow Catalan Picasso, who introduced him to the most radical artists and poets of the day and Dadaist Tristan Tzara, and the emergent Surrealists in 1921. his work from this period was still figurative (portraits, rural themes, and scenes), but were moving towards abstraction. Miro was evolving an original combination of fragments, at times disturbing, at times playful, that plumbed the depths of instinct, memory, and subconscious. Joan Miro i Ferra was fascinated by the challenge of using art as a channel to the subconscious and, from the mid-1920s, he began to fill his canvasses with biomorphic, semi-abstract forms. Even so, he felt suspicious of some of the more outlandish, surrealist doctrines and remained at the fringes of the group.

He moved to France during the Spanish Civil War, producing patriotic material for the struggle against Franco, but was obliged to return south in 1940 after the Nazi invasion. By this stage, Joan Miro's work was much in demand in the US, where he received commissions for large-scale murals. These featured ceramic elements, which played a growing part in the artist's later style.

The great tragedies of war, the Spanish Civil War followed by World War II, prompted Miro to experiment with new styles and materials, like cutouts and collage. After passing through a dramatic phase, a lighter side resurfaced with the intriguing and poetic Constellations series. Miro's exhibits in the United States were immensely successful. His free, creative style made a strong impression on the painters of the New York School, especially Jackson Pollock.

In 2012, Joan Miro i Ferra, Painting-Poem sold at auction in London for US$26.6 million. Later that year, also at auction in London, Peinture (Etoile Bleue) sold for US$33.6 million.

Art Movement History: Surrealism, Abstract
Artists Influencing Joan Miro: Francisco Gali, Pablo Picasso, Hans Arp, Paul Klee, Paul Cézanne
He Traveled To France, USA, Holland
Painters Joan Miro i Ferra Influenced: Robert Motherwell, Alexander Calder, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Roberto Matta, Mark Rothko
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist.