Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. He was a Catalan painter who combined abstract art with Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the tension between his fanciful poetic impulse and his vision of the harshness of modern life. Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism but with a personal style, sometimes also veering into Fauvism and Expressionism. He was notable for his interest in the unconscious or the subconscious mind, reflected in his re-creation of the childlike. His difficult-to-classify works also had a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an ""assassination of painting"" in favor of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.