Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell (1925–1992, born Chicago, Illinois) was a painter of exceptional force and lyrical intelligence whose work represents one of the most sustained and distinctive contributions to Abstract Expressionism. Educated at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at Columbia University in New York, she became associated in the early 1950s with the Abstract Expressionist circle centered around Cedar Tavern, though her work maintained a singular quality that set it apart from her peers.
In 1959, Mitchell moved permanently to France, settling at Vétheuil, near where Monet had painted his water lilies. Working from her studios there across four decades, she produced large-scale, multi-panel paintings of extraordinary ambition and beauty, rooted in her responses to landscape, light, and emotional experience. Her work grew in scale and confidence throughout her life, earning increasing recognition as one of the essential figures in postwar American painting.
Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.