ArtistMiro, Joan

Artist Years1893-1983

Artist NationalitySpanish, French

TitleChemin de Ronde, III

Year1966

MediumPrint > Aquatint Etching

DimensionsPlates: 13.7 X 10.7 inches

Catalog ReferenceDupin 413

Accession NumberRC1530

NotesJoan Miró i Ferrà was a Catalan Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramist. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma in 1981.

Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism but with a personal style, sometimes also veering into Fauvism and Expressionism.[4] He was notable for his interest in the unconscious or the subconscious mind, reflected in his re-creation of the childlike. His difficult-to-classify works also had a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an "assassination of painting" in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

Born into a family of a goldsmith and watchmaker, Miquel Miró Adzerias, and mother Dolores Ferrà. Miró grew up in the Barri Gòtic neighborhood of Barcelona. The Miró surname indicates some possible Jewish roots (in terms of marrano or converso Iberian Jews who converted to Christianity). He began drawing classes at the age of seven at a private school at Carrer del Regomir 13, a medieval mansion. To the dismay of his father, he enrolled at the fine art academy at La Llotja in 1907. He studied at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc and he had his first solo show in 1918 at the Galeries Dalmau, where his work was ridiculed and defaced. Inspired by Fauve and Cubist exhibitions in Barcelona and abroad, Miró was drawn towards the arts community that was gathering in Montparnasse and in 1920 moved to Paris, but continued to spend his summers in Catalonia.
(source: wikipedia.org)