A Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975. Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike and a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society and famously declared an 'assassination of painting' in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.

After studying fine art, he had his first solo show in 1918, where his work was ridiculed and defaced. Inspired by Cubist and Surrealist exhibitions from abroad, his early art was influenced by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne. He was drawn towards the arts community that was gathering in Montparnasse and in 1920 an acquaintance with Francis Picabia encouraged him moved to Paris, where he found a neighbour and friend in Masson. In 1924 he joined the Surrealist group and began to reject the strictures of conventional painting. Through the mid-1920s Miró developed the pictorial sign language which would be central throughout the rest of his career. One of the most significant artists of Modernism, along with Max Ernst, Miró can be called one of the major painters in the orbit of Surrealism.