The Spanish painter Joan Miró (1893-1983), one of the first surrealists, developed a highly personalized pictorial language derived from prehistoric and naive sources.

Joan Miró was born on April 20, 1893, in Montroig near Barcelona. At the age of 8 he was drawing regularly. His sketchbooks of 1905 contain nature studies from Tarragona and Palma de Majorca. He attended the Lonja School of Fine Arts (1907-1909) and the Gali School of Art (1912-1915) in Barcelona, after which he produced portraits and landscapes in the Fauve manner. He had his first one-man show in Barcelona in 1918. That year he became a member of the Agrupacio Courbet, to which the ceramist Joseph Llorenz Artigas belonged.

In 1919 Miró made his first trip to Paris, and thereafter he spent the winters in Paris and the summers in Montroig. He met members of the Dada group and took part in Dada activities. His first...