Joan Miró

175 Pages·1959·30.133 MB·English

by  James Thrall Soby

JJooaann MMiirróó
BByy JJaammeess TThhrraallll SSoobbyy
Author
Soby, James Thrall, 1906-1979
Date
1959
Publisher
The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed
by Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y.
Exhibition URL
www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1933
The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history—
from our founding in 1929 to the present—is
available online. It includes exhibition catalogues,
primary documents, installation views, and an
index of participating artists.
MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art

164 pages, 148 illustrations (35 in color)
$8.50
JOAN MIRO
by James Thrall Soby
Among artists of his generation, Miro has long held a
leading place, and today is respected throughout Europe
and in America for his magnificently personal color, his
inventive fantasy and his perennial freshness of vision.
Born in 1893 at Montroig, a small Spanish town, Miro
was trained as an artist at nearby Barcelona's School of
Fine Arts and other local academies, but in 1915 decided
to work by himself. For a very short time his art showed
the influence of various advanced movements in Euro
pean painting, and then with final abruptness he found
his own authoritative style, a style deeply rooted in Cata
lan heritage, in his native province's Romanesque frescoes,
its music, architecture and festivals. In 1919 he made his'
first trip to Pans, and soon played a major role in the sur-
Splist movement, to which he was attracted by his instinc
tive love of spontaneous expression and chimerical appear
ances. But he has always returned to Spain at intervals,
ana is nourished to unusual degree by the Catalan environ
ment. He now lives at Palma on the island of Mallorca.
Perhaps Miro's most distinctive quality as an artist is
his delicious humor and gaiety. He has retained through
out his career a direct and uninhibited delight in fantastic
forms which relate his work to the imagery of gifted
children, though it must be added at once that his crafts
manship is immensely knowledgeable and skilled. His
personality is unmistakable in whatever he creates, wheth
er ceramics, prints, sculpture or easel and, occasionally, mu
ral paintings. He is sometimes described as an abstract
painter, but he himself is clear on the point: "For me a
form is never something abstract; it is always a sign of
something. It is always a man, a bird, or something else.
For me painting is never form for form's sake."
Mr. Soby is the author of many distinguished books on
modern artists, among them Giorgio de Chirico, Juan Gris
Modigliani, Rouault, and Ben Shahn. His general'
studies include Contemporary Painters and Modern Art and
the New Past.
Jacket design by Miro.
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
11 West 53 Street, New York 19, N.Y.
Distributed by Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City, N.Y.
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JOAN MIRO
Joan Miro. September 1956. Photo Andre Ostier
JOAN MIRO
BY JAMES TH RALL SOBY
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York
TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Henry Allen Moe, Vice Chairman of the Board; William A. M. Burden, President;
Mrs. David M. Levy, Vice President; Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss,
* Stephen C. Clark, Ralph F. Colin, *Mrs. W. Murray Crane, Rene d'Harnoncourt,
Mrs. C. Douglas Dillon, Mrs. Edsel B. Ford, A. Conger Goodyear, *Mrs. Simon
Guggenheim, Wallace IC. Harrison, Mrs. Walter Hochschild, *J ames W. Husted,
Philip C. Johnson, Mrs. Albert D. Lasker, Mrs. Henry R. Luce, Ranald H. Macdo-
nald, Mrs. Samuel A. Marx, Porter A. McCray, Mrs. G. Macculloch Miller, William
S. Paley, Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, Mrs. Charles S. Payson, *Duncan Phillips, David
Rockefeller, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Nelson A. Rockefeller, *Beardsley Ruml,
*Paul J. Sachs, James Thrall Soby, Mrs. Donald B. Straus, *Edward M. M. War
burg, Monroe Wheeler, John Hay Whitney.
*Honorary Trustee for Life
Published by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 59—10311
Typography by Susan Draper
Printed in Germany by Briider Hartmann, Berlin
CONTE NTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
JOAN M I RO by James Thrall Soby
NOTES TO THE TEXT
LIST OF EXHIBITIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY by Bernard Karpel
INDEX