Okay, let's unpack this. We are diving into an
artist whose name, for many, conjures up, well,
these whimsical, almost childlike squiggles,
vibrant colors, and these, you know, floating
geometric shapes. Exactly. You've probably seen
his cheerful suns, maybe his moons and birds,
on a museum poster or a big public sculpture.
Right. But that vibrant sort of surface simplicity...
It hides a much darker, far more volatile core.
We are talking about the Catalan master Joan
Miro y Fera. And if you, our listener, only know
Miro through those iconic, seemingly gentle lithographs,
you are truly missing the storm. I mean, the
fury that drove his creation. This is an artist
whose life was characterized by this intense
internal chaos. We're talking deep documented
episodic depression and all this external political
turmoil that spanned two world wars and the Spanish
Civil War. And somehow he changed. channeled
all of that darkness through this aggressive,
almost intellectual contempt for the very medium
that made him famous. He was, and this is his
phrase, fundamentally dedicated to the assassination
of painting. That phrase, the assassination of
painting, it tells you everything, doesn't it?
It just lays out the contradictions that defined
his entire nine -decade career. He was born in
Barcelona in 1893, lived all the way to 1983,
a prodigious Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramist.
And he wasn't just some local hero, though. His
identity as a Catalan was completely central
to his rebellion. Oh, absolutely. Against the
political powers of Spain, especially. And his
influence is still anchored in that identity.
You can visit two museums dedicated to him today,
one in his native Barcelona, the Fundació Joan
Moreau, and another in Palma, Mallorca. So his
connection to his homeland, his terra, it was
unbreakable, even when he was right in the middle
of the avant -garde nucleus of Paris. That's
right. So our mission in this deep dive is to
try and reconcile those things, the radical rebellious
roots, the man who hated bourgeois art with his
eventual global acclaim and that often whimsical
style. Right. How does the same artist embody
this fierce Catalan? pride, this pioneering surrealist
automatism, and this radical, almost violent
drive to just overthrow traditional art. We're
pulling from a comprehensive set of biographical
and critical sources to trace his evolution through
all these phases, looking at his career stages,
specific major works, and his lasting legacy
across, well, everything. Painting, sculpture,
ceramics. And here's your initial nugget of surprise,
which really speaks to his refusal to be categorized.
Okay. While he is, you know, overwhelmingly categorized
as a key surrealist figure, his personal style
often veered into other, sometimes conflicting
territories. Things like fauvism and expressionism,
especially early on. So he wasn't interested
in being put into a neat little art historical
box. Not at all. That refusal to be categorized
runs straight through his work, even when he
was collaborating with the most, let's say, rigid
surrealist minds. To understand Miro's eventual
radical shifts, we really have to start at the
beginning, when his pursuit of art was still
this major conflict, not some celebrated career.
Exactly. He was born into a family of respected
craftspeople. His father, Mikael Miro Adzirius
was a successful goldsmith and watchmaker. And
there's some fascinating biographical context
here. The sources suggest that the Miro surname
might indicate possible Jewish roots, specifically
Murano or Converso Iberian Jews who had converted
centuries prior. Which speaks to this deep underlying
history of cultural identity in his family line,
even if it wasn't something overtly discussed.
And his creative impulse, it showed up early.
He started drawing classes when he was just seven
years old. But this passion was immediately met
with resistance, specifically from his pragmatic,
business -minded father. Right. So despite that
strong paternal dismay, Miro enrolled at the
Fine Art Academy, La Loccia, in 1907. And this
is the crucial context. It sets up his entire
rebellious career. He didn't just enroll in art
school. No, he also went to business school.
He was trying to do both. He started his working
life as a clerk when he was a teenager, trying
to balance this burning creative urge with the
expectations of a conventional, reliable career.
And that tension was quite literally catastrophic
for him. The pivotal moment that... cemented
his lifelong devotion to art, was a severe nervous
breakdown. He abandoned the business world completely
after this major crisis in 1911. So this wasn't
a gentle transition. It wasn't some slow realization.
No, it was a physical and mental collapse. It
forced him out of the conventional track he hated
and just, violently propelled him into the riskier,
but for him necessary, world of the avant -garde.
That breakdown acts as this profound catalyst.
It forced him to choose. And if we look at the
significance of that, it wasn't just a career
change. It was, you know, a survival mechanism.
It was. Art became a necessary form of therapy,
of expression. It moved him abruptly away from
the pressures of a conventional life, which he
clearly found intolerable, toward the freedom
of pure artistic creation. Even if that creation
was financially insecure and at first met with
total ridicule. And this forced divergence immediately
showed itself in his style. By moving away from
that conventional pressure, he opened the door
to the expressive freedom of what scholars call
his Catalan Fulvist period. So even before surrealism,
he was absorbing these major influences of the
early 20th century. He was looking for methods
to express the internal turbulence he'd just
experienced. Absolutely. He was particularly
inspired by the revolutionary Fulv and Cubist
exhibitions that were happening in Barcelona
and abroad. especially the post -impressionist
intensity of Vincent van Gogh and the structural
clarity of Paul Cezanne. So his initial works
from this period, the ones that gave him that
Fauvist look, were really distinct. Very distinct.
Think about pieces like Portrait of Vincent Nubiola
from 1917. The figure is rendered with these
vibrant, almost clashing colors. Or Nord Sud,
also from 1917, which is a still life. Right.
In those early works, he was already showing
this tendency to just fill the canvas with vibrant,
colorful surfaces and a more painterly, expressive
treatment. Such a sharp contrast to the sparse,
hard -edged, symbolic style that would later
define his most famous works. And Nord's Sud
is a fascinating piece because it directly references
his growing intellectual interests. The title
is taken from an actual literary newspaper of
the same name. Which he incorporates right into
the still life composition. Now, this is a compositional
device you do in cubism, you know, integrating
objects from the real world. But for Miro, it's
also a clear signal to the viewer. He's positioning
himself. He is. He's positioning himself firmly
within the literary and broader avant -garde
communities, the very groups that would define
his time in Paris. But unfortunately, his introduction
to the general public was just bridal. His first
solo show in 1918 at Galleries d 'Almel was met
with total derision. Sources say his work was
actually ridiculed, and shockingly. I mean, can
you imagine pouring your recovery and your passion
into a show only to have people mock it openly?
It must have been truly demoralizing for a young
artist trying to establish himself. But you have
to wonder if that experience, combined with the
earlier business failure and the nervous breakdown.
It just solidified his defiant streak. Right.
He'd already broken away from the conventional
world. Now the art world was rejecting him, too.
This probably fueled his later contempt for bourgeois
taste and the idea of art as a commodity. Absolutely.
So by 1920, Miro makes the decisive move to Paris.
He joins that vibrant arts community gathering
in Montparnasse. Yet he never fully cut ties
with home. And this is critical to understanding
his dual identity. He continually spent his summers
at his family's farm in Mont -Roy -del -Combe
in Catalonia. It became his psychological touchstone.
And this geographical duality? Paris for innovation,
Mont -Roy for roots and spiritual renewal. It's
perfectly encapsulated in the famous painting,
The Farm. Ah, yes. Created between 1921 and 1922.
This piece is universally seen as a key transitional
work. It captures both that cubist structural
restraint and the beginnings of his highly individual
symbolic language. It is the ultimate expression
of his sense of place. The rural Catalan scene
is depicted with this painstaking, intense, almost
microscopic detail. but the composition is augmented
by the presence of a newspaper. There's that
newspaper again. That modern avant -garde element
placed right in the center, symbolizing his exposure
to modernist theories in Paris. It's a perfect
bridge between his tradition and his future.
And we have a phenomenal anecdote here involving
one of the greatest literary figures of the century,
Ernest Hemingway. He later purchased the farm.
He loved it so much he kept it with him and offered
this incredibly high praise. He said it captured
both the feeling of Spain when you are there
and, crucially, the feeling of Spain when you
are away and cannot go there. That ability to
capture the spiritual essence of a place, the
feeling rather than just the visual reality,
that's what truly distinguished Miro. This deep
connection to Mont -Rogue wasn't just nostalgia,
it was formative. It helped him develop the intense
personal symbolism and that strong Catalan nationalism
that would pervade his entire body of work, even
when he was exploring his most abstract or cosmic
themes decades later. It was his anchor in the
chaos. So in Paris, Miro was quickly thrust into
the full force of the avant -garde. Joseph Dalmau
arranged his first Parisian solo exhibition at
Galerie Lolicorne in 1921. But the defining moment...
the one that really cemented his place in 20th
century art history, came in 1924 when he formally
joined the burgeoning Surrealist group. And his
existing poetic and deeply symbolic nature made
him an instant perfect fit for them. Oh, absolutely.
They championed this idea of dreamlike automatism
creating art without conscious thought, you know,
like automatic writing to unlock the subconscious
mind. And Andre Breton, the often dictatorial
founder of the surrealist movement, would later
describe Miro as the most surrealist of us all.
He did. Despite the fact that Miro himself was
always reluctant to maintain official, strict
membership in any group, he prioritized his freedom
to experiment over, you know, adhering to some
dogma. And it was during this explosive early
surrealist period that he was intensely channeling
his lifelong psychological struggles into his
art. Right. We know that Miro battled episodic,
serious depression throughout his life. We mentioned
the 1911 nervous breakdown. But even as early
as that year, he was so affected that he was
bedridden for. three months, totally unable to
function. He fundamentally used painting as a
necessary form of coping, a literal way of keeping
the darkness at bay. He said it himself. He openly
stated that without painting, he became very
depressed, gloomy, and I get black ideas, and
that he wouldn't know what to do with himself.
So for Miro, art wasn't a choice or a hobby.
No, it was essential for mental survival. This
need to create, to escape the black ideas. It
explains the urgency you feel in his work. This
internal mental state is so profoundly visible
in his celebrated early surrealist work, Carnival
of the Harlequin. Painted between 1924 and 1925.
Right. And he explicitly tried to depict the
internal chaos, the frenetic energy and the desperation
he was experiencing in his own mind while battling
depression and, well, hunger. It's a riot of
strange, semi -human figures dancing wildly,
surrounded by all these symbolic objects. But
if you look closely at that painting, or really
any major work from this period, you'll find
a recurring, powerful symbol. The ladder. The
ladder. It's centrally placed in Carnival, and
it's clearly meant to symbolize the act of escaping
the chaos, the need for spiritual or mental ascension.
And it's a motif. a visual plea that reappears
in multiple later works. It suggests this persistent
lifelong search for transcendence or relief from
inner turmoil. That connection between intense
creativity and internal struggle is so compelling.
The sources connect this to research suggesting
that creative individuals sometimes have a statistically
higher chance of suffering from mood disorders.
Right, or a higher chance of genetically transmitting
such conditions. We have documentation of Miro's
serious episodic depression, the dark, gloomy
periods, but... But whether he experienced full
euphoric manic episodes, what we now call bipolar
disorder, that remains uncertain based on the
sources. But the intense emotional fluctuation,
the urgency of creation followed by the need
for escape, that's undeniable in his art and
his personal confessions. And this internal urgency
leads directly to his most radical philosophical
concept, the anti -painting stance. And his shocking
declaration of the assassination of painting.
This wasn't just a stylistic choice like changing
from oil to a... This is a profound philosophical
and political statement. It was. Miro began experimenting
wildly with materials, collage, rope, sand, even
feathers, and rejecting the precious frame of
traditional painting. He expressed utter contempt
for conventional methods that he felt exclusively
supported the stagnant conservative bourgeois
society he loved. The assassination was meant
to upset and destroy the established visual elements
and the very materials of fine art. Exactly.
And this hostility didn't emerge in a vacuum.
It stems from a violent reaction against art
that had become stayed, commodified, and appropriated
by the establishment. He specifically targeted
cubism, which had started as radical, but by
the 1920s had become academic and marketable.
And he didn't pull any punches. Not at all. He
is famously quoted as saying, I will break their
guitar. A direct, aggressive reference to Picasso's
cubist work. It is. He's attacking the popularity
and the political appropriation of Picasso's
still lifes with guitars. Miro's viewed the act
of traditional painting as a kind of moral compromise,
an artifact destined for a rich man's wall. He
wanted to destroy that system to reveal a truer,
more visceral art beneath. Yet what is so fascinating
about Miro is the contradiction in this destruction.
Even while preaching this anti -painting philosophy,
his work rarely became fully non -objective or
purely abstract. That's the paradox. Even when
he was utilizing the raw, chaotic energy of surrealist
automatic techniques in the 1920s, later analysis
of his work, including his preparatory sketches,
shows that the final result was often the product
of a highly methodical, almost scientific process.
He maintained a highly symbolic, schematic language.
He didn't just throw paint on a canvas. He codified
reality into signs. Exactly. We see this immediately
in the works that followed his entry into surrealism,
like The Tilled Field, which is recognized as
his first true surrealist masterpiece. And the
almost cryptographic Catalan landscape, the hunter,
both from 1923 to 1924. The hunter is a perfect
example of this systematic symbolism. The shift
is almost like cryptography, a deeply personal
visual shorthand. He used these highly encoded
signs, a triangle for the head, curved lines
for a mustache, angular lines for the body. It
wasn't immediately legible to the average viewer.
Not at all. In fact, it was so cryptic and highly
structured that Miro eventually felt compelled
to provide a precise, literal explanation of
the signs used. A kind of legend for the painting.
Yes, which absolutely demonstrates that his so
-called automatic process was still rooted in
an intentional, rigorous, and highly personal
pictorial language. It's the ultimate intellectual
paradox. An artist who claims to hate painting,
but meticulously creates a whole new visual grammar
for it. We also see some interesting... mid -career
deviations, showing his willingness to collaborate
and learn. In 1926, he worked with Max Ernst
on designs for the influential ballet impresario
Sergei Diaghilev, which suggests he was always
looking for ways to push his images off the canvas
and into a more dynamic contextual space. Like
performance in theater. And then unexpectedly,
in 1928, he created the Dutch Interior series.
Which marked a temporary yet stunning return
to a more representational form, though still
filtered through his unique lens. And those Dutch
interiors came about after a trip to Holland
and were crafted after postcard reproductions
of works by Dutch Golden Age masters like Sorg
and Steen. Think about that for a moment. The
radical anti -painter. The surrealist assassin.
is finding inspiration not in high art exhibitions,
but in humble, mass -produced postcards. It shows
that even as he was trying to kill painting,
he was still keenly interested in art history
and its visual dialogue, even if he accessed
it via these humble, almost anti -establishment
means. It connects his desire to strip art down
to its bare essentials, to eliminate the pretension,
with a sincere love for the core act of visual
communication. He was attacking the frame and
the establishment, not the impulse itself. For
much of the 1920s and early 30s, Miró had managed
to stay relatively apolitical in his art. He
was focusing instead on personal symbolism and
that generalized, almost foundational sense of
Catalan nationalism. Right. His struggle was
internal and aesthetic. However, the political
reality of Spain, the gathering storm clouds
of civil war, could not be avoided forever. The
Spanish Civil War forced his hand. It marked
a distinct, painful turn toward explicit political
commentary. It did. In 1937, Spain's Republican
government commissioned him to paint a mural
for their pavilion at the Paris International
Exhibition. The same exhibition where Picasso
unveiled Guernica? The very same. The resulting
work was The Reaper, also known as Catalan Peasant
and Revolt. And this commission was a major shift.
The work depicted a Catalan peasant holding a
sickle, a symbol of defiance, of resistance.
It's a powerful, angry image. It forced Miro
to inject a clear, politically charged meaning
into his art, something it had previously lacked.
Tragically, the Reaper was later lost or destroyed
after the exhibition. Which just underscores
the ephemeral nature of politically charged art
during wartime. And that geopolitical instability
only got worse. With World War II looming, Nuro
relocated to Varengeville in Normandy, France,
seeking safety. But the German invasion of France
made that impossible. Right. In May 1940, as
the Germans invaded Paris, he narrowly fled back
to Spain. Which was now controlled by the authoritarian
regime of Francisco Franco. So he's escaping
one chaos, the Blitz and invasion. only to return
to a regime that had previously actively persecuted
his cultural identity and suppressed Catalan
language and symbols. Out of one fire and into
another. Exactly. And it was during this period
of exile and return between 1940 and 1941, while
he was bouncing between Varengeville, Palma,
and his beloved Mont -Roy. That he created one
of his most profound and transformative series,
the 23 gauches known as the Constellations. The
Constellations are breathtaking. A necessary
mental escape from the dark reality of war. They're
small in scale, but absolutely massive in concept,
revolving around complex celestial symbolism.
This was a true spiritual shift toward the cosmic
turn in his work. It was. These works, made during
the darkest period of European history, earned
massive praise, including from Andre Brittain,
who was so inspired by their escapism that he
later wrote a series of poems named specifically
after Miro's series. It's fascinating how the
darkness forced him to look upward. Remember
the ladder in Carnival of the Harlequin? The
symbol of escaping internal chaos. No, the ladder
has become the entire sky. The internal psychological
crisis of the 20s transformed into this cosmic,
universal search for order and beauty in the
face of political collapse. And this series firmly
established a new iconography that would dominate
the rest of his career. The chaotic Harlequin
figures largely subsided, and they were replaced
by the subjects of women, birds, and the moon.
These celestial organic elements became his primary
symbolic language, representing a more hopeful,
universal connection. They offered the viewer,
and Miro himself, a place to hide from the turmoil
of Earth. Meanwhile, his reputation in the United
States was being solidified partially thanks
to the war, which drew attention away from Europe.
And this was largely facilitated by Pierre Matisse,
the son of Henri Matisse, who opened a gallery
in New York City in 1931. Yes. Matisse frequently
exhibited Miro's work and introduced him extensively
to the U .S. market, which proved incredibly
influential for the American avant -garde, particularly
those artists who were looking for a way past
European cubism and into abstraction. And his
recognition grew steadily throughout the latter
half of his life. It did. In 1954, he won the
prestigious Venice Biennale Grand Prize for graphic
work. Four years later, he was awarded the Guggenheim
International Award. And finally, in 1979, the
University of Barcelona recognized him with a
doctorate honoris causa. It shows a tremendous
trajectory, from his first exhibition being defaced
and ridiculed by the public, to receiving Spain's
highest academic recognition as a living master.
Now, despite his deep background in painting
and lithography, the final decades of Miro's
life saw this explosion of activity outside the
two -dimensional canvas. Yes. He accelerated
his work across different media, producing literally
hundreds of ceramics and sculptures. This wasn't
retirement. It was a new phase of radical experimentation.
And crucially, he wasn't just dabbling in different
materials. He was pursuing a theoretical goal
that stemmed directly from his assassination
mission. Right. Miro had proposed what he called
four -dimensional painting. He theorized that
this was a type of art that would transcend the
flatness of painting and even the three -dimensionality
of sculpture, pushing into an unknown conceptual
space -time, motion, or pure idea. That need
to break boundaries to escape the physical limitations
of the canvas and the pedestal is completely
in line with his desire to assassinate conventional
painting. Exactly. If painting represents flat
permanence, he wanted art that could exist beyond
simple physicality. And his public installations
from this period are monumental. They showcase
his transition from canvas master to multimedia
architect. Perhaps most famously, he created
the Wall of the Moon and the Wall of the Sun
at the UNESCO building in Paris between 1955
and 1958. These were massive ceramic commissions,
huge textured walls, showing his complete fluency
in a medium he had only trained in briefly as
a youth. He also fully embraced public sculpture,
often mixing found objects and media. In 1964,
he completed a series of sculptures and ceramics
for the Garden of the Mate Foundation in Saint
-Paul -de -Vence, France. He turned the landscape
itself into a Miro environment. A decade and
a half later, in 1981, his large mixed media
sculpture, initially called The Sun, the Moon,
and One Star, was unveiled in the downtown loop
area of Chicago. It was later renamed Miro Chicago,
and in a wonderful piece of historical context,
it is situated directly across the street from
the famous Chicago Picasso. So Miro, the man
who once vowed to break their guitar, was now
literally facing down the other Catalan master
on an international stage, having moved beyond
the very art form he sought to destroy. And for
those tracking his physical legacy, the bronze
model of that major Chicago work resides in the
Milwaukee Art Museum. showing the meticulous
process behind even his most playful large -scale
sculptures. The sources also reveal a fascinating
and deeply personal collaboration regarding his
textile work. He initially refused to create
tapestries. Yeah, he dismissed the medium as
craft, not high art, but he was eventually persuaded
to learn the craft from fellow Catalan artist
and weaver, Joseph Royo. And it became this fruitful
partnership that added a new physical texture
to his otherwise cosmic forms. The most famous
and perhaps most tragic outcome of this collaboration
was the World Trade Center tapestry. completed
in 1974. Miro and Royo produced several massive
works together, but this particular tapestry
was displayed in the World Trade Center complex,
a potent symbol of American commerce and modernity,
and tragically became one of the most expensive
works of art lost during the September 11 attacks.
It's a profound, ephemeral link between Miro's
dedication to pushing boundaries and a major
moment in modern history. The artist who wanted
to destroy the permanence of painting left behind
a major work that was itself destroyed by global
chaos. It's an almost perfect, tragic, artistic
footnote to his career. They also finished another
major tapestry in 1977 for the National Gallery
of Art in Washington, D .C. It just showcases
how, even in his 80s, Miro was still learning,
collaborating, and pushing into new, massive
-scale forms, constantly searching for that higher
plane. And this expansion of media relates directly
back to his philosophical core, which was so
often inspired by nature and the cosmos the subject
of his constellations. Miro once spoke about
being utterly overwhelmed by the sky and the
landscape. He said, In my pictures, tiny forms
in huge empty spaces, empty spaces, empty horizons,
empty planes, everything which is bare has always
greatly impressed me. What's utterly fascinating
here is that this vision, tiny charged forms
floating in huge empty spaces is exactly what
we see in his later compositions, whether painted
or sculpted. It is. His embrace of massive canvases
and large public works allowed him to express
that overwhelming sense of cosmic scale where
small, intensely charged. symbols float on vast,
bare fields of color. Effectively linking his
deep, lifelong introspection back to the physical
universe. It's the ultimate escape from the internal
chaos of depression and the external chaos of
war. Miro's influence extends far beyond Catalonia
and Paris. His personal surrealist style, particularly
his blend of structured automatism and the lyrical
extractions of the 1940s, was absolutely critical
in shaping post -war American art. He was a primary
source of inspiration for the American abstract
expressionists. We see his imprint clearly on
artists like Robert Motherwell, Alexander Calder,
Arshile Gorky, even Jackson Pollock. Oh, and
Mark Rothko. Roberto Mata. The list goes on.
And we can detail how that influence manifested
for you. For the action painters like Pollock,
Miro's dedication to surrealist automatism, that
idea of letting the subconscious guide the hand.
It provided a key theoretical and procedural
pathway. It did. It led directly to drip and
action painting techniques. He gave them permission
to abandon conscious form. And for the color
field painters like Rothko or Alitsky or Louis,
Miro's unique approach in the constellations.
Where those tiny, charged, biomorphic symbols
float against vast, luminous fields of color.
That was a direct precursor to their own explorations
of color and space. He showed them how to create
depth and emotional resonance with minimal imagery
against expansive backgrounds. He essentially
birthed lyrical abstraction. And his schematic,
often highly graphic style also had a major impact
on applied art. It influenced modern designers
like Paul Rand and Lucien Day. Right. His visual
language was so clean and compelling that it
moves quickly out of the fine art world and into
commercial branding and design fields, proving
that even his assassination of painting could
be commercialized decades later. Beyond painting
and sculpture, Miro created an astonishing amount
of work in publishing. He's credited with creating
over 250 illustrated books, known in French as
livres d 'artistes. Artist books that are works
of art in themselves, often collaborations with
poets. And one of the most poignant and emotionally
charged examples of these literary collaborations
is the posthumous work he did with the French
surrealist poet Robert Desnault. ou les nouvelles
hybrides, which translates to the penalties of
hell or the new hybrides. And this collaboration
had been planned for decades. Moreau and Desnos
had initially intended to collaborate way back
in 1925, but the chaos of the Spanish Civil War
and World War II derailed those plans. Tragically,
Desnos was imprisoned in concentration camps
for his bold criticism of the Nazis, and he died
shortly after his release in 1945. So decades
later, at the urging of Desnos' widow, Miro finally
undertook the task of illustrating the poet's
manuscript. He completed the lithographs in 1974.
The emotional resonance of this act cannot be
overstated. Miro, the lifelong fighter against
inner and outer chaos, was finally paying homage
to his lost friend and collaborator who had suffered
the ultimate fate. of that external political
storm. And the art critics noticed the shift
in tone. The 25 lithographs he created for this
book were described by one critic as having an
emotional lushness that contrasted sharply with
the cool surfaces of much of his other graphic
work. The context of Desnos' fate. The concentration
camp, the loss of life infused Miro's images
with a layer of profound, elegiac depth that
transcended his usual playful symbolism. This
consistent output, critical influence and emotional
depth led to steady international acclaim. Major
retrospectives in New York, London and Paris
took place throughout the 1970s, well before
his death in 1983. And posthumously, his relevance
has only grown. with major exhibitions continuing
into the 21st century, including Miro, the Dutch
interiors at the Met in 2010, and Joan Miro,
Birth of the World at MoMA in 2019. His place
in the canon is absolutely secure. And this acclaim
translates directly into the art market, which,
ironically for the man who despised the commodification
of art, values his work extremely highly. His
major paintings consistently sell for figures
between, say, $250 ,000 and the high eight figures.
The record sales are stunning. They reflect his
enduring status. In 2008, La Caresse des Etoiles
from 1938 sold for $17 million. And a few years
later, in 2012... painting poem which has an
incredibly long poetic surrealist title from
1925 fetched 26 .6 million dollars at auction
and later that same year pencher etoile blue
from 1927 brought in nearly 23 .6 million pounds
setting a new record for him at the time his
valuation reflects his dual identity he's recognized
as both a historical pioneer who invented new
visual languages and an enduring visual force
whose work still captivates collectors globally
We've traced Jono's complex, almost bipolar journey
from a conflicted Barcelona business clerk battling
internal depression to a global multimedia master.
We've seen the personal chaos of depression fuel
his initial surrealist automatism, giving us
that symbolic ladder of escape and the political
turmoil of his era force his hand to address
the outside world with works like The Reaper.
He remained fiercely Catalan, yet absolutely
radical in his global innovation. He was constantly
struggling against the accepted norms of his
craft, which leads us back to his relentless
pursuit of creation over categorization. And
he had a famous and profound dislike for art
critics. Oh, he did. He felt they are more concerned
with being philosophers than anything else, that
they take a preconceived opinion, a structure,
a jargon, and then force their emaciated philosophical
systems to wrap around his art. He wanted his
work to speak without being defined by the critics'
vocabulary. Precisely. Which brings us back finally
to his drive to break boundaries, to assassinate
painting, and to push past the limits of conventional
physical form. We discussed his interest in pushing
beyond two and three dimensions with sculpture
and ceramics, pursuing that theoretical idea
of four dimensional painting. Right. Art that
incorporates time or concept. But we have to
spend a moment reflecting on his final, most
radical and perhaps least known theoretical idea,
the gas sculpture. Yes. I mean, think about this
conceptually. What does it truly mean for an
artist known for creating massive, enduring public
monuments to propose a form that is made? entirely
of gas. It is so ephemeral, so fleeting, that
it essentially ceases to exist the very moment
it is created and released. It is the ultimate
conceptual act against the permanence, the longevity,
and the bourgeois collectability of conventional
art. If Miro was dedicated to assassinating painting,
the gas sculpture was the intellectual suicide
bomber. Leaving behind nothing but the idea itself.
A beautiful, immediate non -object that fulfills
his mission perfectly. It's the highest evolution
of the escape motif. the latter finally reaching
the celestial void. If the constellations were
about finding order in the sky, the gas sculpture
is about dissolving into it. It is the purest
expression of anti -art, requiring the viewer
to engage purely with potential, not with a physical
artifact. A non -object that demands imagination.
So we ask you, the listener, if you were given
Miro's theoretical framework, the means to push
art past three dimensions, what would you create
in four dimensions? Something fleeting, like
a gas sculpture, something enduring, or something
that exists only as pure, terrifying potential?
Think about that until the next deep dive.