Miró1955

Joan Miro (1893-1983), the foremost painter associated with Surrealism, studied in his native Barcelona before going to Paris in 1920. He was enthralled by the work of the Cubist and Fauve artists, who influenced his early style. During the 1920s he met regularly with a number of Surrealists, with whom he began to exhibit in 1925.

His free-form abstractions from the 1920s draw on fantasy, dream, and myth, and many have been characterized as attempts at psychic automatism, or direct transcription of the subconscious. Despite such links with the Surrealists, however, Miro was never an orthodox member of the group. After 1930, he developed his lyrical mature style, distinguished by playful juxtapositions of freely flowing lines and brightly colored, abstract or organic forms. With remarkable...