Joan Miró Ferra was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona Spain, the son of a goldsmith and watchmaker. At the age of 14, he went to business school in Barcelona and also attended La Lonja's Escuela Superior de Artes Industriales in the same city. Upon completing three years of art studies, and under pressure from his parents, he took a position as an accounting clerk. After suffering a nervous breakdown, he abandoned business and resumed his art studies, attending Galí's Escola d'Art in Barcelona from 1912 to 1915.

Miró's work before 1920 showed the latest artistic influences, including the bright colors of the Fauves* and the geometric forms of Cubism*. It was in Paris through the 1920s-1930s where, under the influence of Surrealist* poets and writers, Miró evolved his mature style. His latest works drew on the Surrealist principles of memory, fantasy, and the irrational to create visual art. Miró's works were also shaped by the flat, two-dimensionality of his native Catalan folk art, Spanish Romanesque church frescoes and the primitivism* of Paleolithic cave painting. His forms took on a whimsical quality with playfully distorted animal & human forms, twisted organic shapes and boldly colored geometric constructions, set against flat neutral backgrounds, mostly painted using red, blue, green and yellow.

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