"Hirondelle Amour"
Joan Miró
Spanish, 1893–1983
Barcelona, late fall 1933-winter 1934
A large oil-on-canvas in which Joan Miró assembles playful biomorphic forms, looping black lines, and handwritten words into a dreamlike tableau that seeks to free painting from literal depiction and evoke poetic, subconscious associations.
A deep, velvety blue field feels like air or water while flat patches of red, yellow, white, and green, masklike heads and floating hands drift and connect by thin black cords and the scrawled words “hirondelle” and “amour,” creating a lively, airborne choreography.
Executed during Miró’s mature Surrealist phase, this painting distills his personal visual grammar—part automatism, part poetic symbol—and helped point the way from Surrealism toward lyrical abstraction and a new, expressive modern language of signs.
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
6' 6 1/2" x 8' 1 1/2" (199.3 x 247.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller
Accession
723.1976
Palette
Exhibitions
