Born in Chicago, Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) was an abstract artist with an abundant career spanning over four decades. While she worked in a variety of mediums, including oil on canvas, pastel on paper, and lithographic printing, she is primarily known for her large abstract paintings made with colorful brushstrokes. Mitchell attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and earned her BFA in 1947. Upon graduating, she was awarded a travel fellowship in France for a year, where her paintings grew increasingly abstract. Upon her return to the United States in 1949, Mitchell lived in New York. At a time when women were marginalized in the art world, she captured the attention of and became an active participant in the predominantly male Eighth Street Club (The Club). Founded by artists of the Abstract Expressionist circle, also known as the “New York School” of painters and poets, The Club consisted of notable first- and second- generation Abstract Expressionist painters such as Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Grace Hartigan, Jackson Pollock, Frank O’Hara, and John Ashbery.
After exhibiting in the famous 1951 “Ninth Street Show,” curated by Leo Castelli, Mitchell soon gained the reputation as one of the young leading Abstract Expressionist painters. Mitchell studied at Columbia University and New York University, and later completed an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1959, she permanently relocated to France, where she lived with her companion, French Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle. The move reflected her desire to not only live with her partner, but also to live in the city that shaped Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Wassily Kandinsky. These artists had first impressed her when visiting The Art Institute of Chicago in her youth, inspiring her with their use of line, color, and gesture.
Today, her legacy lives on through the Joan Mitchell Foundation, providing grants for artists in the United States. The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art, and other major institutions began collecting her paintings in the 1950s, and the Whitney Museum held a mid-career retrospective of her work in 1974. Additionally, she became the first female American artist to have a solo exhibition at the Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1982.