Joan Mitchell

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Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925-92), an American abstract expressionist painter and printmaker, was born in London's "second generation."

And though much of her work was in France, she was a participant of the American abstract expressionist movement.

Sonia Gechtoff, Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, Helen Frankenthaler, Shirley Jaffe, Elaine de Kooning, and Sonia Gechtoff were among the few female painters to gain critical and public recognition in her time.

Her paintings and editioned prints can be seen in major museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe.

Early life and education

Mitchell was born in Chicago, Illinois, and the daughter of dermatologist James Herbert Mitchell and poet Marion Strobel Mitchell. She loved diving and skating as a child and hopes that her art will later reflect this athleticism; one gallery owner said Mitchell "approached painting almost like a competitive sport." Mitchell took Saturday art classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, and it would spend her summers of later adolescence in an Institute-run art colony called Ox-Bow. She grew up on Chestnut Street in the Streeterville neighborhood and attended Francis W. Parker School in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. She was close to her Parker classmate Edward Goy, and they remained friends with him in later years, but neither was concerned about the other's jobs.

Mitchell earned her BFA in 1947 and her MFA in 1950 at Smith College and the Art Institute of Chicago. Mitchell, who moved to Manhattan in 1947, wanted to study at Hans Hofmann's school in New York City, but she said she "I couldn't comprehend a word," so she left " terrified." In 1948-49, she was able to study in Paris and Provence, and she also travelled in Spain and Italy thanks to a $2,000 travel grant. Her work became more abstract during this period.

Barney Rosset, an American publisher, was born in Le Lavandou, France, in September 1949. Later that year, the couple returned to New York City. In 1952, the two families would divorce.

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Early career (New York)

Mitchell, a pioneer and poet, was active in the New York School of Artists and Poets during the 1950s and was associated with the American Abstract expressionist movement, but she abhorred aesthetic terms. She owned a studio in Greenwich Village from 1950, first on Eleventh Street and later on Ninth Street. Mitchell was a regular at established artist gathering spots like the Cedar Tavern and The Club, an invitation-only loft space on Eighth Street where Mitchell consulted in panel discussions and attended social gatherings throughout the 1950s.

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Mitchell maintained a lively creative dialogue with fellow New York School painters Philip Guston, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning, whose work she adored. "She went to their studios and shows, and they came to hers," she said in Joan Mitchell, a writer who worked in business and alone, discussing painting materials and great art. "Sonia Gechtoff, 31": Mitchell, Elizabeth Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Shirley Jaffe, Elaine de Kooning, and Sonia Gechtoff were among the few female artists in her period to receive critical acclaim and praise.

Mitchell's work was on display in the artist's Club's historic "Ninth Street Show" in 1951, as shown by art dealer Leo Castelli and members of the Artists' Club; the show also included works by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Hans Hofmann; Joan Mitchell carried her large abstract painting around town with the support of Castelli. Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning thought her art was outstanding, and placed the painting in a good spot in the exhibit. In 1952, she held her first solo exhibition at the New Gallery in New York.

Mitchell was spending more time traveling and working in France by the mid-1950s. She continued to exhibit in New York from 1950s to 1960s, with numerous solo exhibitions at the Stable Gallery. Mitchell confessed that although many of her coworkers were highly supportive of her artistic work, she had a few setbacks despite being a woman in the art field. She was once told by Hans Hofmann that she should be painting, but she took it to mean that male artists were not endangered by female artists so much that they were not concerned if their artistic careers were endangered.

Mitchell met Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle in 1955, with whom she would have a long, rich, and turbulent relationship (from 1955 to 1979). They owned separate homes and studios, but they dined dinner and drank together almost every day.

Mitchell painted one of her breakthrough works Hemlock, a piece by the artist after it was completed for Wallace Stevens' "dark and blue feeling" in 1956.

In October 1957, the first major feature on Mitchell's work appeared in ARTnews. "Mitchell Paints a Picture" art critic Irving Sandler wrote, "Those feelings that she strives to articulate are the characteristics that distinguish a line of prose from a line of prose." However, emotion must have an outside reference, and nature provides the external substance in her work."

Mid-career (France)

Mitchell was living full time in France and painting in a studio on rue Fremicourt, Paris's 15th arrondissement. During this period, her paintings appeared in a number of high-profile international exhibitions, including the Osaka exhibition The Informel and Gutai, the 29th Venice Biennale; the V Biennale of Arte Moderna, So Paulo; and Documenta II in Kassel. Galerie Jean Fournier's (known as Galerie Kléber until 1963) began showing in Paris with regular solo exhibitions at the Stable Gallery and group exhibitions at other venues in New York. For more than three decades, Fournier will continue to be Mitchell's Paris dealer.

Mitchell held solo exhibitions in Paris in the early 1960s as well as Galerie Neufville (1960) and Galerie Lawrence (1962). She had two solo shows in Italy (Galleria Dell'Ariete, Milan, 1960) and Switzerland (Klipstein und Kornfeld, Bern, 1962). Mitchell's work appeared in the Salon de Mai and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris, as well as numerous group exhibitions held in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, and other international venues.

Mitchell moved away from the all-over style and bright colors of her earlier works to use sombre hues and dense central masses of color to represent something indeterminate and primordial. These marks were considered "extraordinary": "The paint clung and squeezed onto the canvases, spitting and sputtering across their surfaces and smeared on with the artist's fingers." The artist herself referred to the work created in the early 1960s as "very violent and angry," but by 1964, she was "attempting to get out of a violent phase and into something else."

Mitchell inherited enough funds following her mother's death in 1967 to buy a two-acre farm near Giverny, France, near Claude Monet's cottage, which had been near Giverny. Mitchell bought the house "so she doesn't have to dogwalk" and it came in handy for her 13 dogs. She lived and worked there for the remainder of her life. The setting in Vétheuil, particularly the view of the Seine and the gardens on her property, became a common reference point for her work. 122 Mitchell used to invite artist friends from New York to visit Vétheuil for creative retreats. "She wanted to give to young people," painter Joyce Pensato said. It's called the Fresh Air Fund by Carl [Plansky] and I. It's the first time she invited me for the summer, and it went from March to September. I was brainwashed for six months, and that's how I discovered who I am."

Mitchell began exhibiting with Martha Jackson Gallery in New York in 1968; she continued to exhibit with the gallery into the 1970s. Mitchell held her first major museum exhibition, titled My Five Years in the Country, at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, in 1972. The exhibit, particularly Mitchell's "Sunflower" paintings from the late 1960s-early 1970s, received critical praise. Peter Schjeldahl, a writer for The New York Times, predicted that Mitchell would be recognized "as one of the finest American painters not only of the fifties but also of the sixties and seventies." "This assertion will not, I suspect, appear to anyone fortunate enough to have seen the new monumental and nearly stunning Mitchell exhibition—49 paintings, some of which are substantial, created during the artist's stay in France—at the Everson Museum in Syracuse." Following the Everson Museum's presentation, the exhibition moved to Martha Jackson Gallery.

Mitchell's first large scale triptych, the 16.5 foot wide Sans Neige (without Snow), was completed in 1969.

Mitchell began exhibiting regularly with New York gallerist Xavier Fourcade, who was her New York dealer until his death in 1987.

Mitchell produced two of her [what went on to be] best-known large scale works, La Vie en Rose (named after French singer Edith Piaf's famed song) and Salut Tom (dedicated to her friend, art critic and curator Thomas B. Hess, who died in 1978). "La Vie en Rose [that it contained] — "Mitchell juxtaposes energetic — almost violent — sections of black and blue brush strokes against a haze of lavender and pale pink, warping the viewer's sense of the painting's scale and directing the eye," Tausif Noir wrote in the New York Times.

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