Born April 20th, 1893, Joan Miro Ferra was a Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramist. Originally from Barcelona, Joan Miro moved to Paris at an early age, where he began to develop an unconventional style of work. Miro studied art at the La Lonja School of Fine Art and Gali's Escola d'Art. His earliest works show the influence of the Fauve and Cubist movements which were fashionable in Spain during the early part of the century. While frequently identified with the Surrealist movement, Miro never fully accepted the movement's creed and refused to sign the Surrealist Manifesto.
Miro was very much against the established painting methods of the time, and is often credited with being the founder of automatic drawing. Automatic drawing is the process of allowing the hand to move randomly on the canvas, leaving the artwork to chance. Many Surrealists believed that this form of drawing would reveal something about the subconscious human mind. For Joan Miro, automatic drawing was also a way to breaking free from conventional form.
The forms of his paintings are organized against flat neutral backgrounds and are painted in a limited range of bright colors, especially blue, red, yellow, green, and black. Amorphous amoebic shapes alternate with sharply drawn lines, spots, and curlicues, all positioned on the canvas with seeming nonchalance. Miró later produced highly generalized, ethereal works in which his organic forms and figures are reduced to abstract spots, lines, and bursts of colors.
It was at the end of the 60´s when his final period was marked and which lasted until his death. During this time, he concentrated more and more on monumental and public works. He was characterized by the body language and freshness with which he carried out his canvasses. He concentrated his interest on the symbol, not giving too much importance to the representing theme, but to the way the symbol emerged as the piece of work.
