Joan Miro (1893-1983), was a Spanish Surrealist painter. He went to Paris in 1919, but before then he had already met Picasso in Barcelona. In 1925 he took part in the First Surrealist Exhibition, and, with Dali, was recognized as the leading Spanish Surrealist. His work tended to become abstract, although he said: For me a form is never something abstract; it is always a sign of something. It is always a man, a bird, or something else. For me an oil painting is never form for forms sake.

Personage Throwing a Stone at a Bird (1926) was painted at a time when Miro was working at an intense pitch and in a variety of original and persuasive styles. By 1926 Miro had moved definitely towards calculation and even anecdote. Personage is much more deliberate and posed. Indeed, on one level the work seems to be all about balances and oppositions. The figure throwing the stone combines the organic contours of its body with the strict linearity of the long straight line that designates its arms. There is a wry enjoyment of the very specific fulcrum in the persons body section, from which arms lurch in the effort of throwing and which topples the body backwards, drawing attention to the spread-eagled stability of the out-sized foot.