Miro

Among the great twentieth-century masters, the surrealist painter Joan Miró stands out for the atmosphere of wit and spontaneity that pervades his work. Author and artist Roland Penrose, a friend of Miró’s for almost five decades, discusses Miró’s art through its many phases. Penrose also examines its major features—the birth of his signs and symbols; his series of anguished peintures sauvages in the 1930s; his lyrical, poetic gouaches; his monumental sculptures and ceramics; his unprecedented use of poetic titles; and his attachment to nature and the night. A brief epilogue by Eduardo de Benito, London correspondent of the Spanish art periodical Lápiz, illustrates the developments of Miró’s last years. Paperback, 208 pages.