Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"Although Miró exhibited with the Surrealists in their first group show in Paris in 1924, he never officially joined the movement or signed any of their manifestos. Nevertheless, André Breton, their acknowledged leader, considered Miró ""the most surrealist of us all."" Miró's work epitomized the visual possibilities of the Surrealist doctrine and he admitted that his subconscious gave the initial impetus to a composition, but unlike the true Surrealist adherents, he insisted that it was important to discipline these impulses and to intellectually impose on them their final structure.
Miró formulated a complex system of calligraphic symbols abstracted from nature, distilled from primitive art forms and drawn from the myths and fables of his Catalonian childhood that allow for a certain amount of interpretation but also have elements of exact meaning. His organic shapes in flat, pure color seem to float or dance against vast empty spaces so that even when his themes are sombre in content his pictographic style, reminiscent of Oriental ideographs, has a quality of fantasy and a playful vitality. Miró's poetic visions have influenced the work of Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky and Robert Motherwell."