Among the great twentieth-century masters, the Surrealist painter Joan Miro stands out for the atmosphere of wit and spontaneity which pervades his work. Miro's art went through many phases, and its major features-- the birth of his signs and symbols, his series of anguished "peintures sauvages" in the 1930s, his lyrical, poetic gouches, his monumental sculptures and ceramics, his unprecedented use of poetic titles, and his attachment to nature and the night--are discussed here in this Revised Edition by Roland Penrose, a friend of the artist for nearly fifty years. 141 illus., 54 in color.