The famous Catalan Surrealist artist, Joan Miró i Ferrà, 1893-1983, lived through and documented some of the most significant events of the twentieth century.
Aidez l'Espagne, 1937
He was born in Barcelona and, after training as an artist there, he frequently travelled to Paris and became a key figure in the Surrealist movement. Miró remained in France with his young family during the Spanish Civil War and expressed his protests explicitly in the aptly named Aidez l’Espagne and Le Faucheur, 1937. He returned to Spain in 1940 after the Nazi invasion, and experienced a kind of internal exile under Franco, working in secret at home but gaining fame abroad for his post-war artistry. His response to the Second World War is more disguised in the Constellation paintings of 1940-1941, criticising fascist aggression while living under the dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini’s ally.
Constellation: The Morning Star, 1940
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