Miró was born in Barcelona in 1893. He began taking art classes at the age of seven and was admitted to the Barcelona School of Fine Arts at the age of fourteen. His career path was cut short however as his parents convinced him to stop art education and become a bookkeeper. This he did but never stopped creating art on the side and eventually fell back into the Academia Galí in Spain to continue art studies at the age of nineteen.

Like many of his contemporaries, he moved to Paris in 1920, where he fell under the influence of surrealist poets and writers including Andre Masson and Max Ernst. While frequently identified with the Surrealist movement, Miro never fully accepted the movement's creed and refused to sign the Surrealist Manifesto. (Ironically, both Miro and Dali who were not associated with the surrealists were the leading Spanish Surrealists of the time.) He also met with Picasso in Paris and through him began experimenting with various techniques and color.

By 1930, Miró had developed a style that remained fairly consistent. It is distinguished by the use of brilliant pure color and the playful juxtaposition of delicate lines with often abstract amoebic shapes. In 1940, escaping the German occupation of France, Miro returned to Spain and eventually settled in Majorca. A year later, the Museum of Modern Art in New York devoted a retrospective exhibition to Miró and with this he achieved international acclaim and became recognized as a pioneer of Modernism.

After 1941, Miró lived mainly in Majorca. He painted murals in New York City and Cincinnati and for the Graduate Center at Harvard. In 1958 he completed ceramic decorations for the UNESCO buildings in Paris. He continued working incessantly creating not only oil paintings but sculptures, ceramics, drawings, collages, etchings and lithographs. He continued working until his last breath. He left us a legacy of modern art and never compromised his style. After his death, a railway sign which he had found in Paris during a visit in his younger days still hung on his studio door, displaying words he had lived by:“This Train Makes No Stops.”