Joan Miró, a Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist, was as a significant figure of Surrealism. He was attracted by the dialectical interplay of opposing forces, encompassing themes such as heaven and earth, day and night, violence and escapism, painting and its negation. It was from the tension and synthesis of these seemingly irreconcilable forces that Miró forged his distinctive plastic language, which stands as one of the most iconic creative expressions of the 20th century. Barely reaching the age of 20, Miró enrolled at the Francisc Galì Academy in Barcelona from 1912 to 1915. Subsequently, he furthered his education at the Sant Lluc Artistic Circle, studying life drawing. These years coincided with the dawn of the 20th century, during which Miró encountered the influential Fauvist painters and held his inaugural solo exhibition at the Galierie Dalmau in 1918.
Between 1919 and 1925, Miró took residence in Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso, Tristan Tzara, and André Breton, immersing himself deeper into the avant-garde scene. It was during this period that Miró’s distinctive artistic voice began to emerge, drawing inspiration from Dadaist influences and subsequently refined through interactions with Surrealist poets and writers. In 1921, Miró held a solo exhibition at Galerie La Licorne, followed by another solo exhibition in Paris at Galerie Pierre in 1925. Upon returning to Spain, Miró started his artistic experimentation, venturing into various mediums including lithography, etching, sculpture, as well as unconventional surfaces such as tar paper and glass, and employing techniques like grattage. By 1930, Miró held his first exhibition in the United States at the Valentine Gallery in New York. This was swiftly followed by another solo exhibition at the prestigious Pierre Matisse Gallery.
In 1936, amidst the eruption of the Spanish Civil War, Miró sought refuge in Paris, only to  return to Spain with the onset of the Nazi invasion of France. Over time, Miró’s artistic expression evolved, solidifying his reputation as arguably the quintessential Surrealist among Surrealists. So pronounced was his Surrealist inclination that André Breton himself described his as “the most Surrealist of us all.” It is perhaps this profound Surrealist essence that prompted the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to organize the first significant retrospective dedicated to Miró during these years (1941).
That very year, Miró began creating ceramics alongside Joseph Llorens Artigas, and bronze sculptures in 1946, concurrently maintaining his dedication to graphic arts. This commitment to graphic art was honored when Miró won the prestigious prize for graphic design at the Venice Biennale in 1954, followed by the Guggenheim International Prize in 1958. During these years, Miró also revisited painting on canvas, a medium he had intermittently explored since 1939. Moreover, in 1947, he made his inaugural trip to the United States. He also participated in the exhibition Le Surréalisme en 1947: Exposition internationale du surréalisme at the Galerie Maeght in Paris, an event curated by Breton and Marcel Duchamp.
In 1981, the Fundaciò Pilar and Joan Miró was inaugurated in Palma de Mallorca, situated within the same house where the couple resided and where Miró worked. Nearly a decade earlier, in 1972, Miró had established a foundation bearing the same name in Barcelona. Over the years, the collection, generously contributed by the artist himself, his spouse, and close confidant Joan Prats, has blossomed to encompass 14,000 works. It originated from a nucleus of 217 paintings, 178 sculptures, 9 textile works, 4 ceramics, nearly 8,000 drawings, and an extensive array of prints. In 1974, Miró created three paintings titled The Hope of the Condemned Man, a tribute to Salvador Puig Antich, an anarchist activist sentenced to death by the Franco regime in the same year. From 1978 onwards, Miró delved into set design, a pursuit that had initially captivated him during his formative years in Paris. It was during this period that Dona i ocell sculpture was conceived in the Joan Miró Park in Barcelona, although it’s worth noting that the first monumental bronze sculptures, Oiseau solaire and Oiseau lunaire, had already been cast during the preceding decade.
In the 1970s with the end of Francoism Miró gained long overdue recognition of his contributions in his homeland. In 1978, he was bestowed with the Medalla d’Or de la Generalitat de Catalunya, followed by an honorary degree from the University of Barcelona the subsequent year. He received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos of Spain in 1980 and the Barcelona Gold Medal in 1981. Miró remained fervently dedicated to his craft in the last years of his life. He delved deeper into ceramics, with works such as the Wall of the Sun and Wall of the Moon next to the UNESCO building in Paris. Additionally, he designed posters, notably the emblematic poster for the 1982 soccer World Cup. Miró’s continued his explorations of sculpture and painting, envisioning the former as ethereal and the latter as four-dimensional.