Joan Miró
Spain, 1893–1983

Born in Barcelona, Joan Miró (jwahn mee-roh) was a Spanish painter, sculptor,
printmaker, and decorative artist. Miró came from a family of craftsmen. In 1907, he
began his artistic training at an art school in Barcelona (where Picasso had studied
12 years earlier). Between 1915 and 1918, Miró briefly painted in a manner that he
himself described as fauve, using strong, bright colors. But in his works of 1918 to
1922, he introduced a precision of drawing.

Miró received international recognition in his later life, and he was honored in large
retrospectives in New York, London, and Paris. Miró was never closely aligned with
any movement, yet the formal and technical innovations that he sustained greatly
influenced twentieth-century art.