You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life.
Spanish artist Joan Miró defied categorisation over the course of his 90 years. Miró worked in painting, sculpture, ceramics and tapestry (although he initially studied business) and consistently bucked artistic trends in favour of pursuing his idiosyncratic style, often using his art to respond to the contemporary political climate of the 20th century. Indeed, a 2008 Museum of Modern Art exhibition Painting and Anti-Painting explored Miró's entirely unique approach to the art form, taking as its central focus his famed statement "I want to assassinate painting" and looking at a decade of his "savage" and grotesquely enthralling works.
A proud native of Catalonia, many of Miró's works take the region as their subject, from landscapes to dream-like, symbolic depictions of Catalan people. His work is largely associated with the Surrealist movement but, in order to maintain a freedom to experiment with style and practice, Miró eschewed subscribing officially to any particular artistic movement; thus, elements of Surrealism, Dada, Magical Realism, Cubism and Fauvism can be identified in varying degrees in his work. Miró's style also proved influential to later Abstract Expressionist artists, such as Gorky, Pollock and Rothko.