Joan Miro

3 Pages 734 Words

Working Thesis:

The Catalan struggle and Spanish Civil War greatly influenced Joan Miró’s art; Miró’s techniques of forceful strokes with paint and ceramics enable Miró to express his feelings and depict the Catalan people’s struggle through art.

Surrealism in the 1920s was defined as a fantastic arrangement of materials that influenced Miró, due to the fact that he was one of the most original and sympathetic artists during the Surrealism periods. Miró was born into the Catalan culture in April 20,1893 in Barcelona, Spain (Munro 288). Having to be born into the Catalan culture gave Miró an opportunity to have an intense nationalist activity. In which much attention was paid not only to political expressions of the need for autonomy, but also to the re-Catalanizing of every day life (Higdon 1).

“It was necessary to fight so that Catalan, our language might be recognized as a cultural language” (“Miró”). In 1910 Miró’s parents bought a masia which is a sort of traditional farmstead of Catalonia, where the family has its roots on the paternal side. Miró described the masia in his painting The Farm of 1921-1922 (Figure1). Clement Greenburg a close friend of Miró who is also a critic, said that Miró’s art is based on ideas “of painting as an irrevocable two dimensional medium” (Munro 289).

Greenburg also stated “Miró is known for his almost total lack of interest in political matters” (Munro 289). The only thing that really kept Miró interested was his people and their culture. What really shot Miró down was the Spanish Civil War, he stated that “I am not in favor of separatism. I am in favor for Spanish unity, European unity, and World unity.” He believed that they should be able to celebrate their myths, and abide by their own laws (Higdon 1).



Being Catalan was pretty hard on Miró as well as his people and their culture. For one, the government tried to shut them out or ...