Miró's art has been seen as innocent and child-like, but one should doubt the innocence, or see the child in quite brutal Freudian terms. This study of the crucial formative period of Miró's art - from 1917 to 1934, from his first emergence in the avantgarde of Barcelona and Paris to his acclaim by the Surrealists and the generality of critics as a modern master - concentrates on the sometimes painful, sometimes ecstatic processes of his early development, working either in Paris or in seclusion at his farm in Montroig in Catalonia. Almost as ascetic as Mondrian, Miró drew deep on his own inner life in perfecting his imagery, which was both controlled and spontaneous, both calculated and free, both painting and 'anti-painting'. This book charts to a greater degree than any others earlier the aggression and determination that Miró brought to his search for genuine expression, avoiding the "poison", as he put it, of 'art', which would have turned his works into "rotting corpses". The English version of the catalogue accompanying the Miró show only at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, March-July 2004