“Throughout her evolution as an abstract painter, Mitchell consistently sought to converge her interests in nature, emotion, and painting. Her subjects were landscape, color, and light and their interaction on a painterly field, and her energetic physical gestures were filled with a romantic sensibility.”
Across the canvas of Untitled, exuberant ribbons of color twist and turn, writhe and skate, float and fall, in a veritable tour de force of painterly mark-making. Executed circa 1956, during what is widely considered the most formative period in the artist’s career, the present work represents the pinnacle of Mitchell’s unique brand of Abstract Expressionism. A period characterized by critically lauded and commercially successful gallery shows, Mitchell’s paintings of the late 1950s mark the development of her signature mode of abstraction, articulated to magnificent effect within the present work, which has distinguished her as amongst the foremost artists of her generation. In Untitled, jeweled specks of radiant blue, crimson, and yellow are tempered by strategically placed swathes of green, which anchor the composition. From these central bodies of concentrated line and pigment, tendrils of color spiral outwards in controlled vortexes of pure expression, lending the painting an extraordinary dynamism and energy. Combining the gestural flair of Mitchell’s artistic peers with the variability and ferocity of the natural world, the present work is captivatingly atmospheric, bringing together the visual languages of abstraction and landscape in a maelstrom of pigment. Alongside this masterful command of her palette, Mitchell employs an incredible range of gestures, from weighty peaks of impasto, to carnal smears of pigment, to delicate passages of thin wash. Indeed, Mitchell’s mark-making is defined by a deep reverence and devotion to gesture – whether as calligraphic, spilled, dotted, thinned, blurred, smudged, or scraped – and its ability to convey the power of memories and experiences, themes she professed as the basis of her painting.
In 1947, after attending art school at the Art Institute of Chicago, Joan Mitchell moved to New York and was immediately enraptured by the city's dynamic art scene. Mitchell was a rare female presence in the otherwise male-centric world of the New York Abstract Expressionists. She moved in the same avant-garde circles, both socially and professionally, as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Hans Hofmann, and was included in the seminal Ninth Street Show organized by Leo Castelli in 1951. During this early point in her career, Mitchell drew influence from the vague figurations of Wassily Kandinsky, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning, but over t.mes
she grew increasingly fascinated and challenged by the bold abstraction of Jackson Pollock. When Mitchell eventually transitioned to full-fledged abstraction in the 1950s, she channeled Pollock in her technique, applying thick layers of paint on the canvas with broad arm strokes and splashing drips from her paintbrush. Unlike Pollock, however, Mitchell maintained a firmer degree of planning and preparation, despite the fact that her abstract paintings such as Untitled seem so spontaneous compared to her early work. Mitchell methodically sketched before she started painting, and she was constantly evaluating and judging her canvases throughout her creative process. Further, Mitchell never adopted Pollock's practice of laying his canvases on the floor while applying paint; instead, Mitchell stood her canvases upright, allowing gravity to influence the downward flow of paint, resulting in the smudges, drips and pools of color that lend Untitled its remarkably dynamic surface.
- 1950-1951
- 1955
- 1956
- 1956-1958
- 1967-1968
- 1974
- 1981
- 1982
- 1991
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1950-1951After receiving a Master of Replica Handbags s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Mitchell moves to New York City and befriends pivotal members of the New York School of painting, participating in Leo Castelli’s “Ninth Street Show” alongside abstract expressionists Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning.
Poster for the Ninth Street Show, Leo Castelli Gallery, 1951 -
1955In 1955, Mitchell participates in the important group exhibition Vanguard 1955 at the Walker arts Center in Minneapolis. During this t.mes , she is also featured as part of the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Pittsburgh International at the Carnegie Institute.
Joan Mitchell in her Paris studio on Rue Daguerre, 1956 -
1956At the apex of her New York period, Mitchell paints Untitled in c.1956, an instrumental work betraying the influence of her Abstract Expressionist peers whilst retaining some of the essential inspiration the artist drew from the European Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Irving Sandler’s renowned essay “Mitchell Paints a Picture” is published in October of this year, marking the first major piece of literature published on Mitchell’s work.
Lot: 3
Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1956
Estimate: $1,500,000 - $2,000,000 -
1956-1958The Whitney Museum of American Art purchases Mitchell’s painting Hemlock in 1956. Two years later, the artist's paintings Ladybug and October are exhibited at the 29th Venice Biennale as part of the International Young Artists Section, a test.mes nt to Mitchell’s prominence as an artist.
Joan Mitchell, Hemlock, 1956, The Whitney Museum of American Art -
1967-1968After living in Paris for almost a decade, Mitchell buys a small estate north of the city in Vétheuil. Mitchell is deeply inspired by the surrounding idyllic landscape, one that was also an inspiration to Claude Monet. The larger space and higher ceilings enabled her to paint using thick impasto at an expansive scale without worrying about damaging the works when leaving the studio.
Claude Monet, Vétheuil in Summer, 1880 -
1974Mitchell's seminal solo exhibition curated by Marcia Tucker opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, exhibiting twenty-two paintings completed in Vétheuil.
Whitney Museum of American Art, c. 1960s -
1981In 1981 Mitchell paints Bottom Yellow, drawing from the flourishing landscape of her surroundings in Vétheuil. Mitchell began planting rows of sunflowers in her beloved garden, flowers which would spark a two-decade-long meditation on the motif and serve as inspiration for some of the most radiant paintings within her oeuvre. Never before seen by the public, Bottom Yellow was selected by the Kinney family following a visit to Mitchell’s home in Vétheuil, where they first viewed the painting in her studio.
Lot: 16
Joan Mitchell, Bottom Yellow, 1981
Estimate: $3,000,000 - $4,000,000 -
1982Mitchell’s solo exhibition Joan Mitchell: Choix de Peintures, 1970-1982 opens at the Musee d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1982, making her the first female American artist shown at the institution.
Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, c. 1960 -
1991In the final years of her life, Mitchell’s work is deeply reflective of her struggle with mortality in the face of her declining health. Yves is one of such paintings, executed in the last year of her life and inspired by her close friend Yves Michaud. She expressed to Michaud a desire to capture his essence as if in a picture, eternally alive within the frame of the canvas. The same year, Mitchell receives the prestigious Grand Prix des Arts de la Ville de Paris in painting.
Lot: 10
Joan Mitchell, Yves, 1991
Estimate: $10,000,000 - $15,000,000
"How much the partial move to Paris emboldened Mitchell is, of course, hard to gauge accurately, but, in 1956, her paintings began to churn with an intensely energized succulence. The environment of white that had, in the previous year, interacted with, and absorbed, her striving strokes now became a denser, more dynamic atmosphere. Darting, dashing, dripping, and stretching strokes of color weave in and out of this often perilous whiteness, which can as readily illuminate as erase the ordering that the more colored strokes strive for."
While the gestural exuberance of the present work engages in an intense dialogue with the Abstract Expressionists, the exquisite beauty of Untitled is rooted in Mitchell’s profound, lifelong appreciation for the beauty of the natural world. Painted circa 1956, Untitled represents a pivotal moment in Mitchell’s development as she began to spend increasing amounts of t.mes in France. a place of beauty, culture, and art history that would deeply influence her practice. After a trip to Paris in 1955 – during which she met Jean Paul Riopelle, another painter and Mitchell’s partner for over twenty years – Mitchell continued to return, eventually moving there outright in 1959. There, Mitchell’s affinity for landscape fostered in her a strong connection to the French Impressionists and European Post-Impressionists, whose luminous canvases enacted an equally acute influence upon her work.
Within the present work, one senses the same sumptuousness of palette and exquisite awareness of light, color, and air articulated in the captivating en plein air paintings of Claude Monet. One scholar describes, “Throughout her evolution as an abstract painter, Mitchell consistently sought to converge her interests in nature, emotion, and painting. Her subjects were landscape, color, and light and their interaction on a painterly field, and her energetic physical gestures were filled with a romantic sensibility.” (Richard D. Marshall, “Joan Mitchell: The Last Decade, 1982—1992” in Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Joan Mitchell: The Last Decade, 2010, p. 8) Sumptuously layered and smeared upon the gem-like canvas, Mitchell’s saturated strokes invoke a lush density reminiscent of Monet’s late renderings of his rose garden at Giverney; rather than striving to emulate a specific landscape, Untitled powerfully combines allusions to nature and memory within an entirely abstract painterly idiom.
