Juan Miro was born in Barcelona in the Catalan region of Spain. His father was a watchmaker and goldsmith, and his mother was the daughter of a cabinet maker; thus craft and art were a part of his childhood. By the age of seven he began taking drawing lessons. He was inspired by the art he saw during his visits to the Catalan art in the museum in Barcelona. His father wanted him to have a profession, so Miro went to the School of Commerce for three years, eventually taking a job as an accounting clerk in a drugstore. He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1911, followed by a severe bout of typhoid fever: ‘’I was demoralized and suffered from a serious depression. I fell really ill, and stayed three months in bed.” To help with his recuperation the family bought a farm in Montroig, outside Barcelona. The following year 1912) Miro began studies at the Art Academy in Barcelona. One of his fellow students was Antonio Gaudi. Miro was interested in and read about everything happening in the art world while he concentrated on drawing and painting nudes, portraits and a few landscapes. His first solo exhibition in Barcelona (1918) was a disaster. Nevertheless, he said he had to paint because without painting he became in his words, ‘‘very depressed, gloomy and I get ‘black ideas’, and I do not know what to do with myself.”
Miro made a first, short trip in 1919 to Paris, where he met Picasso and the poet Tristan Tzara. Tzara was the founder of the Dada movement, the artists reaction to Europe’s inability to stop World War I. The movement was anti many things, including traditional art. Like the other Dadaist, Miro allowed himself to be free of failed artistic traditions. He returned to Catalonia after three months. He felt liberated: “I immediately burst into painting the way children burst into tears.” He declared he would go back and forth between “Paris and the countryside until I die.”
Miro considered this painting a critical turning point in his art. He was inspired by the bright colors of Fauvism, the black outlines of Catalonian art, the Cubism of Picasso, the landscapes of Cezanne, and the freedom of Dadaism. “The Farm” (1921-22) (49’’ x 56.6’’) (NGA) “was a résumé of my entire life in the country. I wanted to put everything I loved about the country into that canvas–from a huge tree to a tiny snail.” Using colorful, flattened geometric patterns, Miro has depicted a tilled field with stylized buckets, pails, a watering can, a barrel, and a newspaper, all strewn about. At the center is a tall Eucalyptus tree next to a yellow path with foot prints and a dog. Further along the path a girl draws water from a well, and a donkey turns a grinding wheel. A yellow house at the left has a first floor stable with a horse and a front patio with a cart. Both the yellow house and yellow shed have red tile roofs. At the right the shed houses ladders, a goat, a rooster, a chicken, rabbits, and numerous apparatus of a working farm. Miro surrounds this scene of his family farm in Montroig with a brilliant blue sky and a lush forest. As Miro indicated, there is even a tiny snail. It can be found next to a tiny bright green lizard in the front right corner. The entire scene is a world of objects and spaces to explore and enjoy.
“The Farm” was purchased by the then unknown author Ernest Hemingway. They met at the gym where they both went to unwind. Hemingway worked as a grocery clerk and borrowed money until he could purchase the painting: “I would not trade it for any picture in the world. It has in it all that you feel about Spain when you are there and all that you feel when you are away and cannot go there. No one else has been able to paint these two very opposing things.” Hemingway compared its significance to Ulysses by James Joyce. He kept the painting throughout his life.
Miro participated in the 1922 Salon d’Automne in Paris. He met and became friends with Andre Breton, the leader of the Surrealists. Freudian theories of dreams and the sub-conscious were the basis for Breton’s idea of “pure psychic automatism.” Miro participated in the first Surrealist exhibition in 1925; however, he refused to sign the manifesto, and he continued to consider himself first and foremost a Catalan artist. “Harlequins Carnival” (1924-1925) (26’’ x 37’’) depicts Miro’s launch into “psychic automatism.” He let his mind open to any and all ideas and images and drew them without a plan. When asked how he got his ideas he responded “hallucination and hunger. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling.” Harlequin, a character from the Italian Commedia dell’arte wears a brightly colored checked costume. The servant/jester character is light-hearted, limber, comic, and often in love. Other painters in France at the time, including Picasso, painted characters from the very popular Commedia.
Art historians have analyzed and described this painting in some detail offering their interpretations. Miro began to develop his own set of symbols and stated the ladder was a symbol of flight, evasion and elevation, and he used it frequently in his art. He stated the green sphere was a globe. The cat was Miro’s cat that sat next to him while he painted. The cat at the lower right appears to sit and to look at the viewer. The cat at the center front performs a comical dance; both cats are attached by a slim cord. Miro identified the black triangle as the Eiffel tower. The viewer can imagine such things as fish, eyes, faces, stars, and balloons. Snaking white and black tubes cross in the center, the black tube ending in a white hand. A misshaped white guitar, possibly Harlequin, is placed next to a winged blue bug with one yellow and one blue wing. Above them is a red and blue circle with two eyes and some interesting appendages. Miro’s typical child-like carnival is full of wonderful and fantastic creatures.
From 1925 until 1928, Miro painted over one hundred “dream paintings.” Breton, known as the Pope of Surrealism, declared Miro a Surrealist and promoted his career. He bought Miro’s “The Hunter” (1926). Miro’s studio in Paris became a gathering place for the avant-garde artists, poets, and musicians. Andre Masson had the studio next door. “Dog Barking at the Moon” (1926) (29’’ x 36’’) (Philadelphia Museum) is an example of Miro’s choice to reduce the number of images and clarify his colors and shapes. Painted with a simple divided background of red earth and black sky, Miro created a space where a fanciful dog appears to howl at the moon. Again, he includes a colorful ladder to allow the viewer to escape, evade, or explore. Miro described his approach: “Rather than setting out to paint something, I begin painting and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself. The first stage is free, unconscious. The second stage is carefully calculated.” Reality is “a point of departure, never as a stopping place.”
Miro married Pilar Juncosa in 1929, and their daughter Maria Dolores was born in 1930. Miro was given his first New York exhibition in 1931 at the new Pierre Matisse Gallery, opened by Henri Matisse’s son. Pierre Matisse supported Miro from the beginning, and Miro became a commercial success in America. Unfortunately, from 1932 to the end of World War II international events created great hardships for everyone. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and World War II caused the Miro family to escape capture several times, and to go into hiding. Miro was on Franco black list. “I was very depressed. I felt that everything was lost.”
While in hiding in Mallorca, during the rule of Francisco Franco, Miro produced a series of twenty-three small paintings titled Constellations. One of the early paintings was titled “The Escape Ladder” (1940). “I had always enjoyed looking out of the windows at night and seeing the sky and the stars and the moon, but now we weren’t allowed to do this anymore, so I painted the windows blue and I took my brushes and paint, and that was the beginning of the Constellations. “The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers” (1942) (18’’ x 15’’) (MOMA) is an example of the second half of the Constellation series when Miro became more adept at dealing with the situation: “When I was painting the Constellations, I had the genuine feeling that I was working in secret. But it was a liberation for me…I ceased thinking about all the tragedy around me.”
“The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers” is an excellent example of Miro’s whimsical yet thought provoking art. One obvious image in the lower right corner is the face of a big cat or (fill in the blank). Great black eyes with white centers and black eyebrows are seen over a long half black-half red nose, with whiskers to the sides. A big sloppy black smile and two small black triangles between the eyes create the effect of a big, friendly smiling figure that welcomes the viewer to explore more of the painting. A pair of black feet at the lower left may belong to the large yellow head with the blue and green eye, or they might be two seals balancing balls on their noses. Oddly shaped heads and eyes, constellations of stars and circles form other imagined creatures. Moons, suns, stars and birds abound. Several of the double black triangle arranged point-to-point appear could be hourglasses. Miro once identified the black triangle as his symbol of the Eiffel Tower. A wandering and circling black line brings many of the forms into compositional harmony. The subtly shaded background space adds another unique touch. From this point on there are no right or wrong impressions, any interpretation of Surrealist art is always up to the viewer.
Miro was able to visit New York City for the first time in 1947. Many European émigré artists had been able to escape the Nazis and flooded to New York City. Like Miro, many found a temporary place to work at Atelier 17, run by Stanley William Hayter. Miro became reacquainted there with many of his artist friends and worked with some of them experimenting and producing prints. Miro’s influence on the Abstract Expressionist was enormous. He was a friend to most of the Dada, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist artists. One life-long friend was Alexander Calder. Miro’s prints from Atelier 17 can be viewed at the Art Academy of Easton until July 8, 2021.
Miro returned to Paris in 1948, and once again moved back and forth from Catalonia to Paris. Now he was world famous and he began to receive major commissions. His non-commissioned work was mostly printing and ceramics. Prolific as always, he made over 1000 lithographs from 1954 until 1958. For a commission from UNESCO in Paris, he competed the mural “The Wall of the Moon” (1955-58) (7.2’ x 49’) with the assistance of ceramicist Josef Liorens. Numerous large mural projects followed
Beginning in the 1950s, Miro designed tapestries for Marie Cuttoli’s shop in Paris, and more tapestry commissions followed. One such tapestry “Woman” (1976) ((6’’x 67’’) (with Joseph Rovo) hangs in the new wing of the National Gallery in Washington, DC. Miro’s 1974 tapestry commission for the World Trade Center hung in the lobby from 1974 until September 11th 2001, when it was destroyed.
During the last twenty years of his life, Miro created more than 150 sculptures. Some were cast bronze figures and others made from found object. “Personage Gothique” (Bird-Flash) (177’’ x 79’’x 54’’) (7535 lbs.) was first created from found objects in 1974, and cast in bronze in 1977. He sculpted the bird like shape on top. The box was cast from a cardboard box, and the bottom arch was cast from a donkey’s collar. Miro’s work is intriguing, worth contemplating, and provides a fun and joyful experience, whether it is a painting, print, tapestry or bronze sculpture. Knowing the elements that compose the National Gallery sculpture, makes it more amazing and enjoyable.
The Miro Foundation was opened in Barcelona in 1975. Only a portion of his work can be seen because he was incredibly prolific, and his art can be found worldwide. Miro died at the age of ninety in Barcelona. The New York Times ran his obituary on the front page. Among the Miro quotes: “At the age of 10 or 11 art class was like a religious ceremony to me. I would wash my hands carefully before touching paper or pencils. The instruments of work were sacred objects to me…. I have always worked for Liberty. Liberty of expression in art is the same as liberty of expression in ideas.” At the installation of a large mural in Kansas in 1978: ”It’s the young people who interest me, and not the old dodos. If I go on working, it’s for the year 2000, and for the people of tomorrow.”
Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.
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