Joan Miró (April 20, 1893 - December 25, 1983) was a painter, sculptor and ceramist born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Drawn to the artistic community gathering in Montparnasse, in 1920 he moved to Paris, where, under the influence of Surrealist poets and writers he developed his unique style. His surrealist works are considered amongst the most original of the 20th century. In 1926, he collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Max Ernst pioneered grattage in which he troweled pigment from his canvases. Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma de Mallorca on October 12, 1929, and on July 17, 1931 the couple had a daughter, Dolores. One of the most radical of surrealist theorists (the founder of surrealism, André Breton, would describe Miró as "the most surrealist of us all"), Miró expressed his contempt for painting (at least as conventionally thought of) and his desire to "murder" and "assassinate" it in favor of new means of expression, in numerous writings and interviews from the 1930s on. Shuzo Takiguchi published the first monography on Miró in 1940. Joan Miró won the 1954 Venice Biennale printmaking prize, and in 1980 he received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos of Spain. In his final decades Miró accelerated his work in different media, producing for instance hundreds of ceramics, including the Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun at the UNESCO building in Paris. He would also do temporary window paintings (on glass) for an exhibit. In the last years of his life Miró wrote his most radical and least-known ideas, exploring the possibilities of gas sculpture and four dimensional painting. Joan Miró died in Mallorca, Spain, and was interred in the Montjuďc cemetery in Barcelona. Today, his paintings sell between US$250,000 and US$8 million. Many of his works are exhibited in the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona.
[Biography Document - Joan Miro - 2K - Published March 30 2005]
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