From 1925 to 1927, Miró produced a series of 'automatic paintings.' Greatly celebrated by the Surrealists, the paintings were inspired by images from Miró's unconscious. These pictures featured forms that had been reduced to lines and suspended in empty space, as if floating in front of the background. Legend has it that the artist would sometimes paint in a state of hallucination owing to extreme hunger, staring at a blank surface until images began to suggest themselves. However, many of the 'automatic paintings' had preliminary sketches and are not as random as they may at first seem.