Miró is a world-renowned Spanish painter, sculptor, and ceramist. He studied at La Llotja School of Fine Arts and at the Academia Galí in Barcelona.
His works before 1920 reflect the influence of Fauvism, cubism, and influences from folkloric Catalan art and Roman frescos from the churches.
In 1920 he traveled to Paris, where he met Picasso. In 1921 he showed his first individual exhibition at La Licorne Gallery. The success of Miró took root in his aptitude to seduce the public with the spontaneous perception of his language of wavy forms and his irresistible chromatic attraction. The composition of his work is organized on flat funds of neutral tones, most are identical with a short range of vivacious colors, especially blue, red, yellow, green, and black. In his works, Miró arranges amorphous silhouettes alternate with marked lines, points, curls, or feathers. He later produced more ethereal works in which the forms and organic figures diminish to points, lines, and explosions of color.
In 1941 he returned to Spain. He experimented with many other artistic forms, such as engraving, lithography, watercolors, pastry, collages, painting on copper, sculpture, theatrical sceneries, and cartons for tapestries. Nevertheless, the creations that had major importance, along with his pictorial work, are his ceramic sculptures, and particularly highlighted are the two ceramic murals which he made for the UNESCO building in Paris (The Wall of the Moon and the Wall of the Sun, 1957-59) and the mural of the Conference Hall and Exhibitions of Madrid.
In 1975, the Joan Miró Foundation Centre of Contemporary Art Study was officially opened in Barcelona.
In 1979 Miró was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Barcelona.
In 1980, King Juan Carlos awarded Miró the Gold Medal for Fine Arts.