Honoring Joan Mitchell

February 1 – June 15, 2025

Joan Mitchell in her Vétheuil studio, 1983. Photograph by Robert Freson, Joan Mitchell Foundation Archives, © Joan Mitchell Foundation.

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We celebrate the centenary of the birth of Joan Mitchell with a small exhibition of her works in the MOCA Permanent Collection. Joan Mitchell (1925, Chicago – Vétheuil, 1992) had a career that spanned more than four decades, from her first professional solo exhibition in New York in 1952, until her death in her adopted home France in 1992. Joan Mitchell’s primary medium was oil paint on canvas, although she was also drawn to drawing with pastels, and printmaking, through which she developed her singular visual vocabulary rooted in gestural abstraction. Her approach to abstraction is distinguished for its physicality, daring use of color, and direct connections to her everyday experiences of landscape, people, poetry, music, and even her beloved dogs. Mitchell is widely recognized as one of the most significant artists of the post-war era.

Images

Joan Mitchell with her poodle, Georges du Soleil, in Springs, New York, ca. 1953. Photograph by Barney Rosset, Joan Mitchell Foundation Archives, © Joan Mitchell Foundation.

“Music, poems, landscape, and dogs make me want to paint... And painting is what allows me to survive.” — Joan Mitchell, 1974

Joan Mitchell in her 10 rue Frémicourt apartment, Paris, ca.1960. Photographer unknown, Joan Mitchell Foundation Archives.

Joan Mitchell and one of her Skye terriers, ca. 1963. Photographer unknown, Joan Mitchell Foundation Archives.

Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1979. Pastel on paper. 22 3/4 x 15 ½ in. Collection of Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, 2016.04.09 © Estate of Joan Mitchell

“I carry my landscapes around with me.” — Joan Mitchell, 1957

Joan Mitchell in Vétheuil, ca. 1980. Photographer unknown, Joan Mitchell Foundation Archives.

Joan Mitchell with her German shepherd Iva in Vétheuil, France, 1983. Photograph by Robert Freson, Joan Mitchell Foundation Archives, © Joan Mitchell Foundation.

Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1985. Pastel and watercolor on paper. 12 5/8 x 8 7/8 in. Collection of Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, 2016.04.32 © Estate of Joan Mitchell.

Joan Mitchell, Chord III, 1986. Oil on canvas. 77 x 44 inches. Collection of Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville. Gift of Donald and Maria Cox, 2016.04.0.

“Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work.” — Joan Mitchell, 1986

Portrait of Joan Mitchell at her home in Vétheuil, France, 1991. Photograph by Marabeth Cohen-Tyler. Image courtesy Kenneth E Tyler Archive, National Gallery of Australia.

A native of Chicago, Mitchell studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Upon graduating in 1947, she spent over a year in France before settling in New York in late 1949. There, she became an active participant in the “New York School” of painters and poets, exploring different approaches to composition and gesture as part of the emerging Abstract Expressionist movement.

Over the next four decades, Mitchell dedicated herself to the single-minded pursuit of abstract painting of the highest order, while moving between New York, Paris, and later the French countryside in Vétheuil, where she made her home from 1968 until her death in 1992. Throughout her long and varied career, Mitchell drew on experiences and memories of the world around her—particularly views of cities, fields, rivers, lakes, and trees—as sources for her work. She once said, "I carry my landscapes around with me." 

Special Thanks to the Joan Mitchell Foundation

Recommended Reading

Sarah Roberts & Katy Siegel, Joan Mitchell (Yale University Press, 2021)

Mary Gabriel, Ninth Street Women (Little Brown, 2018)

Irving Sandler, “Mitchell Paints a Picture” (ARTnews, 1957)