Joan Mitchell

A preeminent American Abstract Expressionist painter, Joan Mitchell developed a gestural vocabulary and a mastery of color that were singular among her peers. She took a synesthetic approach to landscapes and figures alike, conceiving each gesture to be a translation of a feeling stored in memory. She sought, in her words, “to paint what [nature] leaves me with.” Born in Chicago in 1925, Mitchell attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and spent a fellowship year in France before moving to New York in 1949. There, she joined the exclusive Eight Street Club and was included in the famous 9^thStreet Show in 1951, which marked the ascendency of Abstract Expressionism. By the end of the ’50s, she was regularly exhibiting at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery. In 1955, Mitchell began living part-time in Paris, and in 1968 she settled in the village of Vétheuil, northwest of Paris, where she worked continuously until her death in 1992. For the duration of her five-decade career, her commitment to gestural abstraction was unwavering.