"The magnificence of painting reaches its zenith, in the already considerable oeuvre of Joan Mitchell, from the 1980s. As if something, in her, had come to the surface, as if freedom had at last been conquered... an escalation into boldness, a rise to the top, from where to master all the possible spaces. Never has color been more delicate, more sumptuous; never the gesture more independent, more audacious.”
E xecuted during a period of stylistic transition and artistic discovery, Joan Mitchell’s Petit Matin from 1982 captures both the passionate dynamism of the artist’s early years and the graceful, intentional beauty of her later work. Having lived in the idyllic hamlet of Vetheuil for nearly fifteen years, Petit Matin demonstrates the confidence and ease with which Mitchell reflected the abundance of her lush natural surroundings while maintaining a distinctive impressionistic exuberance.
Mitchell’s enrollment at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1947 not only marked the beginning of her career but allowed her access to the works of impressionists such as Claude Monet and Paul Cezanne, whose influence would be felt for the rest of her career. Though early works reflected the raw nature of New York City and Mitchell participated in an exciting visual dialogue with her Abstract Expressionist contemporaries, her ultimate relocation to France in 1962 marked a pivotal moment in her career. Moving from Paris to Vetheuil, a former home of Claude Monet, allowed for her style to evolve to incorporate her newfound rural milieu, resulting in a liberation of textures and a fullness of line and color clearly present in Petit Matin. In contrast to other examples from this period, this work is unique in that it is painted from edge to edge, allowing the bright, gestural brushstrokes to fill the entirety of the canvas. The warm pink and jovial orange tones stretched across the canvas are broken by bursts of deep greens, evoking images of the sun pouring through the trees at daybreak. Still present are the qualities reminiscent of past works and indicative of works to come, Petit Matin is a marvelous distillation of the range of styles present throughout Mitchell’s oeuvre that characterize her as a master of abstraction.
