Untitled

Joan Mitchell's painting of the mid-1970s embodied a terrific vitality and majestic feel for color that is clearly conveyed in Untitled. As with much of her work of this period, Mitchell applies brushy veils of paint that build up the richly textured surface. Flecks of bright red-orange highlight the azure, lavender, umber and earthy green passages, while wisps of white anchor the composition. By 1975, Mitchell had already established herself firmly within the art scene of New York as an important artist of the Abstract Expressionist School. Her painting of the mid-1970s exhibited a certain confidence, stylistic charisma and personal success that is clearly evidenced in Untitled. Mitchell's choice of color palette is indisputably responsible for the warmth and joy emanating from the present work, as is the tactile surface that results from Mitchell's combined use of brush and loose skeins of paint. Untitled is in stark contrast to an earlier time in Mitchell's career when her work, particularly from the 1960s, regularly incorporated the emotions felt during darker episodes of her life.

Having lived in France for nearly twenty years on and off, Mitchell was deeply inspired by her surroundings. In 1967, the death of Mitchell's mother left the artist with an inheritance sizeable enough to purchase the estate at Vétheuil. The countryside granted Mitchell a privacy and physical closeness to the natural landscape that living in the French capitol had not. She would often sit out on her terrace overlooking the Seine and regularly worked in her expansive garden, planting sunflowers and other brightly colored flowers and plants. The solitude of the countryside, its rolling hills and valley lush with color and light brought much joy to Mitchell--a joy which can be felt in her works dated from late 1967 to the mid-1970s. "Like Monet and other Impressionists, Joan adored the rain-washed, cloud-scudding Valley of the Seine for its moody weather and grainy-white light that intensified colors. Everything greened and grew: even the stone walls sprouted climbing roses. The space-feelings were ordered yet open, and the colors-the clear yellows of colza and forsythia, the foamy whites of hawthorn, the tender violets of predawn skies, the grass greens, the evanescent blues of late-spring twilights-deliciously 'Frenchie'" (P. Albers, Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter, A Life, New York, 2011, p. 317).

During this period, she worked closely with Xavier Fourcade in New York and Jean Fournier in Paris, both where she regularly exhibited. Mitchell was enlivened by her professional establishment and financial security that resulted in the fruitful and impressive works produced in this period of her career. In 1972, the artist was granted a solo exhibition at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York of forty-nine paintings produced in France over a five-year period. In his review of the show, Peter Schjeldahl wrote that "If the current revisionist study of Abstract Expressionism yields any lasting benefits, I must believe that among them will be a recognition of Mitchell as one of the best American painters not only of the fifties, but of the sixties and seventies as well" (P. Schjeldahl, "Joan Mitchell: To Obscurity and Back," New York Times, 30 April 1972). Untitled was painted just three years after this exhibition and immediately following the breakthrough exhibition in 1974 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Joan had reached a new height of success and prowess. Her confidence is immediately traceable in the subtleties of composition and distinctive array of techniques applied in the present example.