Born in the colorfully creative city of Barcelona, Spain, Miró is primarily known for paintings that are dazzlingly difficult to classify. His works combine the unconscious exploration of the Surrealists, the freedom of abstraction, the playfulness of Dada, with an emotional and colorful indebtedness to the Fauves and Expressionists. With his own personal style, his works always contain a large dose of whimsy and exhibit a childlike quality—qualities that are remarkably difficult to execute. Along with painting, Miró worked in sculpture, ceramics, murals, and printmaking. He once expressed his contempt for conventional painting methods and famously declared an “assassination of painting” in favor of more experimental artforms that he would explore and theorize in his later years. Of his technique, the artist proclaimed, “Rather than setting out to paint something, I begin painting and as I paint, the picture begins to assert itself.” Houston is fortunate to display our own Miró sculpture in the downtown area outside of the J P Morgan Chase Tower. The sculpture, titled Personage and Birds, was created in 1970 and installed in downtown Houston in 1982. This public artwork is a welcome delight for many city workers and visitors as they navigate the concrete terrain. 

This sparkling print is included in the 1956 illustrated book Un Poème Dans Chaque Livre (A Poem In Each Book). The book is composed of sixteen illustrations from such exceptional artists as Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Georges Braque, Fernand Leger, and others. The book was published and printed in Paris with only one hundred editions in print. Miró created more than two thousand original prints, making him one of the most important printmakers of the twentieth century. He enjoyed creating illustrations for books, such as this one, and illustrated more than two hundred fifty books in his lifetime. He established relationships with master printers of respected printing ateliers, and enjoyed the collaborative process. For these efforts, in 1954 the artist was awarded the prestigious Venice Biennale printmaking prize.  

Miró grew up in Barcelona, Spain with a family of Catalan descendancy. He began drawing classes at the age of seven at a private school housed in a medieval mansion. To the dismay of his father, he enrolled at the fine art academy at La Llotja in 1907. Under Spain’s Franco regime, all citizens of Catalan ethnicity were subject to persecution and Miró was to live many years in exile. He had his first solo show in 1918 at the Galeries Dalmau, where his work was ridiculed and defaced. He was greatly inspired by the Fauve and Cubist work he viewed in Barcelona and abroad, and in 1920 he moved to Paris to pursue work as an artist. The artist remained attached to his homeland of Spain and spent many years in Majorca. He died in his home in Palma in 1983 at age 90. 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.