And let’s start a new month with a painter from my hometown:

Kerstiaen de Keuninck the Elder.
(1560 - 1632)

Kerstiaen de Keuninc was a Flemish Baroque painter. He is best known for his imaginary landscapes with theatrical light effects. In addition, he specialized in fires and disasters, with at least seven Fires of Troy and five Fires of Sodom to his credit. His themes and style evolved little. Three of his paintings were exhibited in the Broelmuseum in Kortrijk. One of his works is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerstiaen_de_Keuninck

Mountain Landscape with Waterfall
around 1605-1610
Oil on panel
height: 45.5 cm width: 76 cm
Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht
https://www.bonnefanten.nl/nl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnefantenmuseum

1992

 


Poems, with text by Nathan Kernan and eight color lithographs by Mitchell, is published by Tyler Graphics Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York.

On October 30, 1992, Mitchell dies of lung cancer in a Paris hospital.

Joan Mitchell at her property La Tour in Vetheuil, France in 1991 - photo: David Turnley

Untitled
1992
Oil on canvas
280 x 360,5 cm
Private Collection

For much more:

https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell/artwork/

1992

Mitchell's first solo museum exhibition of drawings, Joan Mitchell: Pastel, opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In conjunction with the exhibition Joan Mitchell: Pastel, a monograph with an introduction by Klaus Kertess, is published by Robert Miller, New York.
Éditions de La Dif­ference, Paris, publishes Joan Mitchell by Michel Waldberg, the first monograph in French on the artist.

Ici
1992
Oil on canvas
260 x 400 cm
aint Louis Art Museum
Saint Louis, Missouri
https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/26230/

1991

Mitchell receives the Grand Prix des Arts de la Ville de Paris in painting.
Mitchell returns to Tyler Graphics in Mount Kisco, New York where she and Ken Tyler collaborate on the Fields, Trees, and Weeds suites of prints.

L'Arbre de Phyllis
1991
Oil on canvas
280 x 200 cm
Private Collection

1990
'Mitchell painted from memory. From “landscapes [she carried with her] – and remembered feelings of them.”
With an eclectic memory, she turned these feelings into colour then swiped, scraped, splatted and lumped them like wads of gum on the canvas. She created panoramic spaces, holding patterns. Everything that happened, everything she saw, became framed and frozen in motion, “like a fish trapped in ice.”
In Marge, these feelings are both somehow constrained and expansive, exploding in radiant tangles like a carefully choreographed firework show.
Look at the way the paint drips, red into blue, yellow onto white. The paint has a life of its own; caught in a moment yet uncontrollable.’

 
These words are by writer and photographer @VictoriaLHannan. Read the rest of her reflection on Marge in the Sep–Oct 22 Issue of NGV Magazine, available online at ngv.melbourne/ngv-magazine.

Marge
1990
Oil on canvas
195 x 228 cm
National Gallery of Victoria , Melbourne, Australia
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/97172/

1990

 
From an article by Phillip Barcio:

<i>When Mitchell moved to a larger studio in the countryside of Vétheuil, she no longer faced the problem of having to roll her painted canvases up to move them. She was able to create large-scale canvases that were painted as thickly as she liked. Yet she still remained more committed than ever to the polyptych format. The combination of working on a massive scale and also creating pictures that spanned multiple canvasses allowed her to accomplish something unique: she was able to construct monumental compositions, while also allowing the viewer to compartmentalize various aspects of the work. This strategy created opportunities for ever-more subjective experiences to emerge from her multi-paneled paintings. </i>

https://www.ideelart.com/magazine/joan-mitchell-paintings

Taillade
1990
Oil on canvas
259.8 x 400 cm
MoMA
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79544

1989

Mitchell receives the Grand Prix National de Peinture in France and has her first solo exhibition at the Robert Miller Gallery, New York.
Limestone Press publishes Smoke, a book of Mitch­ell's etchings and poems by Charles Hine.

South
1989
Oil on canvas
260 x 400 cm
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France

1989

Mitchell is hospitalized for a second hip operation. After the surgery she leases a studio on Rue Cam­pagne-Première in Montparnasse, where she works on pastel drawings.

Days
1989
Oil on canvas
92 x 209 cm
Private Collection

1988

Mitchell's retrospective exhibition, The Paintings of Joan Mitchell: Thirty-six Years of Natural Expres­sionism, organized for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, tours the United States with stops at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Art; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California; and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. Joan Mitchell, edited by Judith E. Bernstock, guest curator of the exhibition, is published by Hudson Hills Press, New York, to accompany the exhibition; it is the first full monograph on the artist.

Untitled
1988
Oil on canvas
65 x 54 cm
Private Collection

 1988

Mitchell receives the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement from the College Art Association of America. Mitchell is the first artist to receive this newly established award.
She also receives an honorary doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is appointed Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

Untitled
1988
Oil on canvas
61 x 50 cm
Private Collection

1987

Gallery owner Xavier Fourcade dies.

No Birds
1987
Oil on canvas
220 x 396 cm
Private Collection

1986

<i>Joan Mitchell told interviewer Yves Michaud in 1986, “I imagine a sort of scaffolding made of painting stretchers around a lot of colored chaos as an identity.” The terms of Mitchell’s self-image are characteristic in that they point through the self to the work. Instead of a throwaway professional despair (or cosmic acedia at mid career), her “scaffolding” reflects the weathered pragmatism of an improviser who has seen into the heart of her method.</i>

https://www.artforum.com/print/198807/in-living-chaos-joan-mitchell-34436

Untitled
1986
Water-soluble wax crayon and wash on paper
27 x 30 cm
Private Collection

1986

An interview of Joan Mitchell conducted 1986 April 16, by Linda Nochlin, for the Archives of American Art, at the Westburry Hotel, in New York.

https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-joan-mitchell-12183

Due to her hip replacement Mitchell couldn’t stand much longer than 20 minutes so she made a lot of small works in this period.
This is one of the smallest, not much more than a postcard.

Untitled
1986
Water-soluble wax crayon, wash, oil pastel and graphite pencil on paper
16,6 x 10 cm
Joan Mitchell Foundation

1985

Before Again II
1985
Oil on canvas
279 x 200 cm
Detroit Institute of Arts
Detroit, Michigan

1984

 
In 1984, Mitchell was diagnosed with advanced oral cancer and a mandibulectomy (removal of the jaw) was advised. In October, she obtained a second opinion from Jean-Pierre Bataini, a pioneer in radiation oncology with the Curie Institute, whose therapy was successful, but left Mitchell with a dead jawbone (osteonecrosis), along with anxiety and depression. She had quit smoking on doctor's orders, but remained a heavy drinker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Mitchell


1985

In 1985 Mitchell’s health further deteriorated when she developed osteoarthritis as a result of hip dysplasia. She underwent hip replacement surgery at Hôpital Cochin in December 1985, but with little success. During her subsequent recuperation at a clinic in Louveciennes, she started watercolor painting. Her postoperative difficulties necessitated using an easel and working on a smaller format. Her River cycle is emblematic of this period.

 Few days I (after James Schuyler)
1985
Oil on canvas
220 x 200 cm
Private collection

 11983

La Grand Vallée VII belongs to a triumphal series of twenty one large-scale paintings that Joan Mitchell painted between 1983-84—a powerful and emotional body of work that is widely regarded to be a highpoint of her long and distinguished career. Across two towering canvases the artist assembles a torrent of rapid, colorful brushstrokes that coalesce into a mystical landscape, a place that is of particular resonance to both the artist and those close to her. Yet, this is much more than an abstract representation of an actual place, it is a manifestation of the presence of that place, encompassing not only the physical beauty of the landscape itself, but also the feelings of emotion, happiness and loss that are associated with it too. One of only five diptychs in the series, La Grand Vallée is distinguished by dense thickets of explosive color that weave their way across the picture plane, evoking growth or the transition of seasons. Rendered with the artist’s signature impassioned gesture and luminosity, the painting is a masterwork from one of the most influential visionaries of the Abstract Expressionist movement at the height of her powers. 

 
https://www.christies.com/features/Expert-view-Joan-Mitchell-La-Grande-Vallee-VII-10548-7.aspx

1983
La Grande Vallée VII
1983
Oil on canvas
259.7 x 260.6 cm
Private Collection

1983

Mitchell begins the Grande Vallée paintings, a suite of twenty-one monumental works inspired by a hidden valley in Brittany precious to dear friend Gisèle Barreau and her cousin during their child­hood.

La Grande Vallée VI
1983
Oil on canvas
280 x 260 cm
Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain
Paris, France

1982

Mitchell's older sister Sally Perry dies of cancer.

Begonia
1982
Oil on canvas
283,2 x 203,2 cm
Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, Lewiston, New York

1982

Mitchell has her first major European museum solo exhibition, Joan Mitchell: Choix de Peintures, 1970-1982, at the Musee d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris. She is the first female American artist to have an exhibition at the museum.

Buckwheat
1982
Oil on canvas
221x200
Private Collection

1981

Mitchell creates the Bedford Series, a group of ten large color lithographs published by Tyler Graphics Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York.

https://nga.gov.au/media/dd/documents/Joan_Mitchell_Bedford_series_1991.pdf

Room
1981
Oil on canvas
81 x 61 cm
Joan Mitchell Foundation

1981

Dr. Edrita Fried was a psychoanalyst who was senior supervisor and training analyst at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in Manhattan and director of the center's Performing Arts Counseling Service.
She died in 1981, 70 years old.

Edrita Fried
1981
Oil on canvas
295.275 x 760.73
Joan Mitchell Foundation

1980

<i>Mitchell painted Minnesota, an expansive work on four panels, in 1980. The use of multiple panels made it possible for her to create repetition on a large scale, and to insert the elements of time and change into the static medium of painting.</i>

https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell/artwork/0728-minnesota

Minnesota
1980
260 x 621 cm
Fondation Louis Vuitton
Paris

1979 part 2

Untitled
1979
Oil on canvas
195 x 390,5 cm
Fondation Louis Vuitton
Paris

1979

Mitchell's relationship with Riopelle ends.

Wood, wind, no tuba
1979
Oil on canvas
280 x 401 cm
MoMA, N.Y.

 <b>1978</b>

In Vétheuil there was a majestic linden tree in the courtyard outside her home. Tilleul, is the French word for linden tree (or basswood).This tree was an integral part of her daily landscape, and served as an inspiration for more than a dozen paintings and works on paper with this same title.

Tilleul
1978
260 x 180 cm
Oil on canvas
Centre Pompidou, Paris

1977 part 2

Parasol
1977
Oil on canvas
100 x 244 cm
Private Collection

1977

Untitled
1977
Pastel on Paper
57,5 x 39,5 cm
© Estate of Joan Mitchell.

1976 part 2


<i>”Joan Mitchell’s Pour Patou (1976), a bold and atmospheric oil on canvas, is another highlight of the exhibition. Mitchell fills the canvas with thick, stubby marks of greens, golds, blues, and black. Mitchell, who also exhibited in the Ninth Street Show and gained entry into the New York School’s circle, lived and painted in the East End during the summers of 1953 and 1954. In 1959, Mitchell moved to Paris and spent much of the rest of her career in France.”

From an article about an exhibition in N.Y. 2020: “Affinities for Abstraction: Women Artists on Eastern Long Island, 1950–2020” by y Sarah E. Fensom</I>

Pour Patou
1976
Oil on canvas
198 x 115,5 cm
Private collection

1976

Mitchell has her first solo exhibition with Xavier Fourcade Gallery, New York.

No rain
1976
Oil on canvas
279,5 x 401 cm
The Museum of Modern Art
New York, New York
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79711

 

In expansive canvases like No Rain (1976), Joan Mitchell combined assertive, richly textured brushwork with vibrant, lyrical color. “Abstract is not a style, I simply want to make a surface work,” she once said about her approach.

1975 part 2

Untitled
1975
Oil on canvas
100 x 73 cm
Private Collection

Untitled
1975
Oil on canvas

194 x 114 cm

1975

Mitchell creates numerous pastel drawings on paper with typed poems by friends Jacques Dupin, J. J. Mitchell, James Schuyler, Pierre Schneider, and Chris Larson.

Untitled (Blue)
1975
Drawing by Joan Mitchell with poem by J.J. Mitchell
Pastel and typewriting on paper
36.2 x 22.9 cm
Collection Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

The poem:

 

Blue

 

No pastel of you

straw-hatted, palming

your erasures, smudging

(the way you do) your blue

could fix for me

('blue, blue' you say)

the way you make your blue.

 

And for no reason

my eyes and the sky

cry for you.

1974

Mitchell's solo exhibition, curated by Marcia Tucker, opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Untitled
1974
61 by 50 cm
Private Collection