His real strength is drawing. Those biomorphic shapes that Kandinsky and all those Americans borrowed in the 30s/40s - Miro's little 'Constellation' drawings set all that in train, seriously advance the field or all-over picture so loved by Greenbog. But like so many artists that excel at drawing (like Picasso, Michelangelo) their drawing often leaves no room for painting. It becomes a sort of afterthought - Oh yeah! facture! gesture! colour! - but like you say, there's a slight false note to it that you can't miss when you see them face to face.
I love Mirō (hey you can paste in those accents from word!) and the way he steers all those pictograms between biomorphic blobs and subliminal notation, or abstract writing - Surrealism! At its most insouciant! - but at the certain point a lot of it did get swallowed up by graphic design, became a victim of its own popularity. He's an artist too easily imitated. He's reason enough to go to Barcelona, let alone the Tate.
When Picasso painted Guernica for The Spanish Pavillion at the World Fair in 1937, Mirō contributed a huge screaming peasant head mural, about 30' high. Afterwards it got trashed. Sigh. No one remembers it now. But even crappy photos show it was AWESOME!
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