Joan Miró (Barcellona, 1893 – Palma di Maiorca, 1983), painter, sculptor, and ceramicist, was a key figure in the Surrealist movement. He was drawn to the dialectical interplay of opposing forces—heaven and earth, day and night, violence and escapism, painting and its negation. From the tension and synthesis of these seemingly irreconcilable elements, Miró forged a distinctive visual language that stands among the most iconic creative expressions of the 20th century.

Before turning 20, Miró enrolled at the Francisco Galí Academy in Barcelona (1912–1915), later continuing his studies in life drawing at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc. These formative years coincided with the emergence of modern art in Europe, during which Miró encountered the influence of Fauvist painters. In 1918, he held his first solo exhibition at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona.

Between 1919 and 1925, Miró lived in Paris, where he met influential figures such as Pablo Picasso, Tristan Tzara, and André Breton, immersing himself in the avant-garde. This period marked the emergence of his unique artistic voice, shaped by Dadaist influences and further refined through his engagement with Surrealist poets and writers. In 1921, he held a solo exhibition at Galerie La Licorne, followed by another in 1925 at Galerie Pierre, both in Paris.

Upon returning to Spain, Miró embarked on bold artistic experimentation. He explored diverse techniques and media—including lithography, etching, sculpture, and unconventional supports such as tar paper and glass—while employing processes like grattage (scraping paint from the surface). In 1930, he held his first solo exhibition in the United States at the Valentine Gallery in New York, soon followed by another at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, which became a key venue for his work in the U.S.

In 1936, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Miró sought refuge in Paris, only to return to Spain following the Nazi invasion of France. Over time, his artistic vision matured, and he became widely regarded as the quintessential Surrealist. His devotion to the movement was so profound that André Breton referred to him as “the most Surrealist of us all.” This distinction likely contributed to the Museum of Modern Art organizing his first major retrospective in 1941.

That same year, Miró began collaborating with Josep Llorens Artigas on ceramic works, and by 1946 he was also working with bronze sculpture, all while continuing to pursue graphic arts. His contributions in this field earned him the Grand Prize for Graphic Work at the Venice Biennale in 1954 and the Guggenheim International Award in 1958. During this period, he also resumed painting on canvas—a medium he had approached intermittently since 1939.

In 1947, Miró visited the United States for the first time. That year, he also participated in the landmark exhibition Le Surréalisme en 1947 at Galerie Maeght in Paris, curated by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp.

In 1981, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró was inaugurated in Palma de Mallorca, in the very house where Miró lived and worked. Nearly a decade earlier, in 1972, he had established the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona. The foundation’s collection—enriched by donations from Miró, his wife, and his close friend Joan Prats—has grown to include more than 14,000 works, beginning with a core collection of 217 paintings, 178 sculptures, 9 textile works, 4 ceramics, nearly 8,000 drawings, and a substantial number of prints.

In 1974, Miró painted The Hope of the Condemned Man, a triptych dedicated to Salvador Puig Antich, an anarchist activist executed by Franco’s regime that same year. From 1978 onward, Miró explored set design, a discipline that had first intrigued him during his early years in Paris. Around this time, he created Dona i ocell, a monumental public sculpture for Parc Joan Miró in Barcelona—although earlier monumental bronzes like Oiseau solaire and Oiseau lunairehad already been produced in the 1960s.

With the end of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s, Miró finally received long-overdue recognition in his homeland. In 1978, he was awarded the Medalla d’Or de la Generalitat de Catalunya, followed by an honorary degree from the University of Barcelona in 1979. In 1980, King Juan Carlos I presented him with the Gold Medal of Fine Arts, and in 1981, he received the Gold Medal of Barcelona.

In the final years of his life, Miró remained passionately dedicated to his art. He continued his work in ceramics, creating major public works such as the Wall of the Sun and Wall of the Moon near the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. He also designed iconic posters, including the official image for the 1982 FIFA World Cup. Until the end, he continued to explore the boundaries of painting and sculpture, conceiving sculpture as ethereal and painting as “four-dimensional.”