The Spanish painter Joan Miro combined abstract art with surrealist fantasy in a colourful, whimsical, style.

One critic described it:

“Persistent experimentation and a lifelong flirtation with non-objectivity stamped Joan Miró’s magnificent mark on the art world… he remains one of modern art’s greatest mavericks with a visual vocabulary unmistakably his own.”

Early in his career Miro experimented with two styles of painting – Fauvism (bold colours and strong brushstrokes) and Cubism (the artist version of reality about places and people), periods that lasted for about eight years.

But Miro changed.

He turned towards surrealism – the artists imagination finding magic, strange beauty, in the unconventional, the unexpected.

Surrealism until Miro consisted of dark, foreboding, images.

His contribution to the surrealism movement was the use of bold colours, his depictions often exhibiting a whimsical quality, making him one of the 20th. Century best artists.