Kelly Blue Adams Drawing 1 10/23/12

Joan Miro i Ferra

Everyone it seems is familiar with certain names, or personas in the "Art" world. Names like Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso and in the Surrealist movement, most people are familiar with the name Dali. What is sad to me is that beyond these few scant names, the only other artists the average person is aware of has to do with the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". Some people are so vapid as not to even realize that Donatello, Michealangelo, Leonardo and Rafael were artists. For me, the world of art has always been a cosmos of fascination, love and envy. Fascination with the lives, skills and methodologies of the masters. Love of the works, techniques and passion behind them and envy that I have never considered myself to have even an inkling of the talent that the most obscure of "great" artist exhibited in a rough sketch. Among the many artists I have come to admire over the years, Modigliani, Basquiat, Velasquez, de Chirico, Titian, I must admit the guilty pleasure of being a Salvador Dali fan. From the beginning I loved the concept among the Surrealists of

dealving into the inner sanctum of the unconscious sea of mind. Along the highway of self education in the realm of Art I happened upon Andre Breton, Magritte, Max Ernst and of course had heard the name of Joan Miro vollied about. Unfortunately as is my wont, I tend to come to things in a snail paced, "kick" or "fad" sort of way. Fads of my own quirky dork-dom and methodically to a point to bore even the most ardent fan of Tai Chi. That being said, I chose the artist Joan Miro for this venture in essay for the simple fact that even though aware of Mr. Miro as a member of the Surrealist movement, I have little to no other knowledge. It seems that Miro was born Spanish in April of 1893 to a watchmaker father, Miguel Miro Adzerias and a goldsmith mother, Dolores Ferra. Having two artisans for paternals would seem to be of great advantage to an offspring and to me, would naturally incline someone to have appreciation, if not talent, for the arts. When Miro was a mere toddler, eight years old, he was enrolled in the School of Industrial and Fine Arts in Barcelona, Spain until 1910. He also attended the fine arts academy at La Llotja. Evidentally Joan excelled in talent for it was not long thereafter that he was recruited by Modest Urgell and Josep Pasco to become a private apprentice. During the time that Miro was becoming trained, the legendary rivalry between Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani was well underway. The Cubists had not come to the fore of the artworld as of yet nor had the Surrealists created a movement of import. During 1911 Miro became ill, contracting Typhoid fever before moving on from Urgell and Pasco to the training and mentorship that Fransceso Gali would provide. Gali proved to be of major influence on young Joan although his father Miguel was by no means a fan

of his unrelenting desire for a fine arts education. As Fine Art is rarely a high paying or even mildly lucrative career I am sure that we all can sympathise with poor Joans father in this regard. If you have never eaten tuna out of the can because you can't even give away a sketch then you have never really been an artist in my book. The young Catalan painter came to study at the Circle Artistic de Saint Lluc until 1918 when he had his first solo show, I am now 42 and have yet to have this honor. At this showing unfortunately the work was defaced, ridiculed and destroyed, which I have had the misfortune of. During this period the whipper snapper Miro became infatuated with the popular Cubist and surrealist movements that were bourgeoning abroad and found this to be an ideal occurence for him to leave Barcelona for Paris in 1920 while continuing to return home for the summers. Another movement that influenced Miro among many other painters was the Fauvist movement. This impacted Joan to such an extent that later critics have dubbed some of his early Parisian work as his "Fauvist" period. In 1924 Joan Miro finally came to join the group whose movement his work would become synonymous with, the Surrealists. Early on Miro had a thick, deep, scattered style that was packed with movement and subject matter, in my opinion a typical reflection of his age at the time. The young have so many things, thoughts, feelings running through their psyches that they tend to overdo or "decorate" their work. Later critics of Miro's earliest Surrealist work choose to dub this period his "dream" period. Early experimentation is a necessity of all budding artists and Miro was no different, he simply had not settled into becoming a mature and complete artist as of this period.

As a member of the Surrealist movement during the mid-1920's, Joan did some collaberative work with Max Ernst, a giant in the movement, and together they created a technique called, "grattage". Grattage is method by which the artist trowells pigment directly onto the canvas and a technique that in my abstract work, I utilize exclusively. Unlike some in the movement, Miro at no point abandoned representation in his work nor did he completely drift over to the more abstract visuals that Ernst was exploring during this same period. Salvador Dali, a somewhat more classical painter on the other hand has many of his seminal works that favor those of Miro and Ernst until Dali came to grips with the fact that he was more of a traditionalist in the vein of Velasquez. In 1929 Miro got married, the death of all great artistic lives correct? Not necessarily so, Renior was married and also had in the neighborhood of 12 children, all the while maintaining one of the most prolific and proficient careers of all time. Miro like Renoir, seemed to be able to juggle the domestic with the artistic to a great and profitable degree. He and family moved to the United States after the birth of his daughter, Dolores, and joined the Matisse Gallery in New York City. Even with this move to the U.S. Miro never ceased to make his summer sojourns back to his beloved Spain until the Spanish war prevented him from doing so physically. Miro spent the rest of his live primarily in the United States while he continued to have shows and join group showings around the world, especially in Paris. Of course during World War II the entire art world suffered with all mankind through the tragedy that was the Holocaust and the evil that was the Third Reich. Unlike some of the others in the Surrealist movement, especially Dali and Breton, Miro was never really politically outspoken nor addressed the issues in his work. A good friend of Miro's, French Poet

Robert Desnos was, and even spent years in Auschwitz. Dali created his "Spanish Civil War with Baked Beans" and of course Picasso gave us his "Spanish Civil War" painting of iconic proportions but not Miro. From the research I have done it appears that Joan was more of a reserved family person than a political or social radical. One of the great works that Miro created was the "World Trade Center Tapestry" which we lost forever, among so many other human masterpeices, on September 11th, 2001. Prior to this Miro represented the group via the request of Andre Breton at the "Homage to Surrealism" in Spain, not to mention creating such legendary works as; "The Sun the Moon and One Star", (later called Miro's "Chicago"), "The Farm", "La Caresse des toiles " and over 250 illustrated books are credited to him. Joan Miro was an important figure in the world of the Surrealists and unlike Ernst who came out of Dadaism, Surrealism was really Miro's first and only movement in the art world. His paintings today say from $250,000.00 to $26 million, Joan Miro died on Christmas Day, 1983.