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Joan Miró is the childlike genius.
If you ever find yourself in Barcelona, keep an eye open for examples of the work of local artist Joan Miró (1893-1983). His monumental sculpture "Woman and bird" was installed in Barcelona's Parc de Joan Miró in 1982 and he was responsible for the famous ceramic paving. Alternatively, you could take in a trip to the Joan Miró Foundation Centre near the Montjuic Olympic stadium. Young Joan was always fascinated with drawing and received special tuition from one of his primary school teachers from the age of seven. Bowing to pressure from his father to follow him into the family business, he enrolled at the Barcelona School of Commerce Fine Arts to study book-keeping in 1907 while simultaneously keeping up his artistic studies at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts where Modest Urgell and Josef Pascó were among his teachers. One example is "Prades, the village" (1917), an oil on canvas painting which is on show at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York. By the 1930s, Miró had developed a style of his own and his fame and recognition began to spread internationally. Throughout his life, Miró, who never quite lost the appearance and mannerisms of the modest accountant he once was, said he worked like a peasant and loved the plain, easy things in life. There are no complicated lines and structures in his work and his forms are few and simple. His colours are strong and bright and his best work is a song to happiness and the imagination. After the end of the Spanish Civil War, Miró turned his attention to different media, experimenting with sculpture, ceramics and murals. By the time of his death, Miró had compiled a massive body of work including; around 2,000 oil paintings, 500 sculptures, 400 ceramic objects, as well as over 5,000 drawings and collages.
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