ARTIST OVERVIEW

Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) was a leading member of the "second-generation" of abstract expressionists who rose to prominence in the late 1940s and 1950s. Her paintings—with their vigorous, curvilinear brushwork in warm and cool contrasting colors on a broad expanse of white, often unprimed, canvas—are distinct from those of her peers in that the work conveys a strong sense of unity with nature. This emphasis on external experience as it relates to landscape and nature sets Mitchell's work apart from much of the abstract expressionist painting of the period, which placed a premium on capturing interior states of being. Nonetheless, of all the postwar abstract expressionist painters, it is Mitchell who remained most faithful to the original ideals of spontaneity, individuality, and expressive gesture.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Mitchell attended Smith College and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1948 she traveled to France on scholarship, and, upon her return to the U.S., established herself in New York City. There she enrolled in Hans Hofmann's painting classes and had her first exposure to the ideas and artists of the New York School, specifically the abstract expressionists who dominated the art scene at the time. Mitchell was greatly influenced by Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline and adopted their strong, gestural brushwork and aggressive color. Drawing on her recollections of the vast waters of Lake Michigan she saw as a child, Mitchell began painting large-scale canvases filled with slashing strokes of color breaking over an intense white ground. Mitchell said she strove "to convey the feeling of the dying sunflower," and her works, devoid of anecdote or theater, exude a visual, objective approach towards the natural world.1

During the late 1950s, Mitchell traveled frequently to France and moved there permanently in 1959, settling in Vétheuil in a house once occupied by Claude Monet. Despite her expatriate status, her painting remained quintessentially American as she continued to embrace the empirical and eschew the theoreticism of her European counterparts.2 However, Mitchell's interest in and exploration of the natural world aligns her with such early European modernists as Monet, Cézanne, and Kandinsky.3

In 1974, Mitchell was honored with a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and she continued to exhibit widely both in the United States and Europe until her death in 1992. The Whitney Museum organized a second major retrospective in 2002. Joan Mitchell's work is represented in most major museum collections throughout the world.
 

1. "About Joan Mitchell," The Joan Mitchell Foundation, http://fdncenter.org/grantmaker/joanmitchellfdn/about.html, June 7, 2005.

2. Ibid.

3. Patti Stuckler, Grove Art Online: Joan Mitchell biographical entry.