Sept 2021 – The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hosts a major retrospective of the work of Joan Mitchell.
The New York Times discusses the exhibition here The Roots of Joan Mitchell’s Greatness
An early work from 1948 would look completely at home in a gallery today.
“I’m where I’ve always wanted to be — stove — bread & wine & canvases — I’m not depressed even — just arrived at a real knowledge of where I don’t belong which is everywhere,” she wrote.
Though they appear derivative at first glance, these early works show how the careful consideration of form, color, line and space — the building blocks of all painting — would come to define the artist’s studied, deliberate approach to painting for the rest of her life.
Mitchell’s work is discussed several times in the book Abstract Painting: Concepts and Techniques .