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Clip & save art notes. ABOUT THIS SELF-PORTRAIT This portrait was painted in 1919, when Joan Miro was 25 years old.At this time he was still living in his hometown of Barcelona, Spain,and was only at the beginning of his long artistic career. As a youngartist, he was searching for a style of painting that best suited him,and he was feeling the influence of work by other young artists whosework he had seen in a traveling exhibition that had come to Barcelonafrom Paris, France. Joan Miro was especially impressed with work of the Cubist artistswho altered objects in their pictures to make them geometric, instead oftrying to imitate real life. However, this painting is not like anyother he painted before or after; and it is one of only a few he paintedthat gives us any idea of what he looked like. As you look at this picture, you will notice that Miro divided theface into separate parts by using carefully painted edges to separateone part from another, with blended color to show the different roundedsurfaces (contours) inside the face. Other artists might have blendedall the parts together, but Miro had the idea of showing each partseparately--as Cubist painters did--while, at the same time, making sureto hold all the parts together to form a single head. The reddish-pink colors used in the face also help pull the facetogether (unify it), while separating it from the red shirt and the warmbrown of the background. The whole painting is unified by the similarityof the warm reddish colors that were used. The red shirt is very loose fitting, with one side having adifferent pattern from the other. Here again, Miro uses Cubist ideas.The pattern on the shirt is quite bold and geometric. He added to thisfeeling by showing the folds of the shirt in a Cubist way by paintingthem with black edges that are more geometric than they would be in reallife. Similar black outlines also appear in many of Miro's earlylandscapes. The expression on the face shows the concentrated effort the artistwas giving to this self-portrait. He is sitting perfectly still, and hiseyes stare straight into the mirror to create an almost symmetricalcomposition that he changes only slightly through the mixed patterns ofthe shirt and such minor items as the parting of his hair. The result isa recognizable portrait of a young man who is interested in showing whathe looks like, but is even more interested in exploring new ways ofpainting than concerning himself too much about an exact likeness. As a point of interest, this painting was purchased by the famousSpanish artist, Pablo Picasso, who had it on the wall of his homethroughout his life. ABOUT THE ARTIST Joan (the Catalan spelling of Juan, pronounced "Hwon")Miro was born in Barcelona and, while he lived in other placesthroughout his long life, he always thought of himself as Spanish, andparticularly from the part of Spain called Catalonia. His father was aprosperous goldsmith who had also inherited a farm in the nearbycountryside. Joan became a clerk in his father's business when he leftschool at 17. Some time afterwards, he fell ill and spent time on thefarm recovering from his illness. It was at this time that he began tostudy art. During this early period, he painted pictures of the farm andthe nearby countryside. Later, after visiting a traveling art exhibitfrom France, he began to include ideas in his work that he had admiredin the French paintings. By the time he was 24, he had held his firstexhibition of art works in Barcelona and was certain that he wanted tobe an artist. By the time he was 26, Joan was dissatisfied with the artisticideas in Barcelona and left home to study and paint in Paris, which wasthe world center for art in the 1920s. Miro was particularly impressedby the Surrealist paintings of artists such as Giorgio de Chirico Noun 1. Giorgio de Chirico - Italian painter (born in Greece) whose deep shadows and barren landscapes strongly influenced the surrealists (1888-1978)Chirico , YvesTanguy, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp Noun 1. Marcel Duchamp - French artist who immigrated to the United States; a leader in the dada movement in New York City; was first to exhibit commonplace objects as art (1887-1968)Duchamp , Max Ernst, Rene Magritte and Jean Arp Noun 1. Jean Arp - Alsatian artist and poet who was cofounder of dadaism in Zurich; noted for abstract organic sculptures (1887-1966)Arp, Hans Arp .He found a studio in Paris that was near to them so he could meet andtalk with them and, hopefully, learn how to improve his own work. Although Miro was a small, shy man, he made friends with theseleading young artists. As a result of these friendships, his art changedto become much more abstract and dreamlike. Instead of recognizablepaintings like the earlier farm scenes and the portrait reproduced here,his later work was composed of objects that were quite unrecognizable.It was as though he had developed a private visual language of his ownthat showed his subconscious subconscious:see unconscious. emotions rather than recognizable objects.As time went on, he revolted further against normal kinds of art andused various combinations of scrap materials, such as old bedsprings andscraps of rope. Miro's studio was full of objects that interested him thatmight be used in his work as useful ideas. The studio was also crowdedwith artworks waiting to be finished. Miro's art became more aggressive and unhappy after theSpanish Civil War Spanish civil war,1936–39, conflict in which the conservative and traditionalist forces in Spain rose against and finally overthrew the second Spanish republic. broke out in 1936. The war also prevented him fromspending his summers in Catalonia. Later, in 1940, he was able to escapefrom Paris to Barcelona when the German Nazis invaded France. Heremained in Barcelona throughout World War II. Only toward the end ofthe war (1944) was he able to visit New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , where he held anexhibition of his work. He also met numbers of artist friends in NewYork, whom he had not seen since before the war when he lived in Paris. During the later part of his life he preferred making large worksof art for outdoor places rather than paintings to hang on walls. AtBarcelona Airport, for example, he created a ceramic wall mural muralPainting applied to and made integral with the surface of a wall or ceiling. Its roots can be found in the universal desire that led prehistoric peoples to create cave paintings—the desire to decorate their surroundings and express their ideas and beliefs. measuring 10 x 50 meters (33' x 165'). He took three days justlooking at the place where the wall would be before doing anything else.He than made a model of the wall (a maquette ma��quette?n.A usually small model of an intended work, such as a sculpture or piece of architecture.[French, from Italian macchietta, sketch, diminutive of macchia, spot ) on his studio floor. From this time until his death at age 90, Miro created many morepaintings in his own unique surrealist, abstract style, as well manylithography lithography(lĭthŏg`rəfē), type of planographic or surface printing. It is distinguished from letterpress (relief) printing and from intaglio printing (in which the design is cut or etched into the plate). prints, engravings and large ceramic murals. Examples of hisart can be seen in several American art museums as well as at HarvardUniversity Harvard University,mainly at Cambridge, Mass., including Harvard College, the oldest American college.Harvard CollegeHarvard College, originally for men, was founded in 1636 with a grant from the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. . Students will also be able to see examples of Miro'sart in most art books on modern art, some of which feature his artalone.