Joan Miró was a Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist and ceramist from Catalonia. He is considered one of the greatest surrealists. Miró was the son of a goldsmith and watchmaker. Initially he followed a trade education, but in 1912 he started an art education in Barcelona. In 1920 he moved to Paris where he took lessons at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In Paris Miró made friends with Picasso, Max Ernst, Hans Arp and Magritte and came under the influence of Cubism. Like Picasso and Georges Braque, Miró never pursued the conclusions of cubism to complete abstraction. His forms, however alienating, always refer to reality - to concrete reality, or to reality as it exists during dreaming.