Plowed Field

  • 1971
  • Joan Mitchell
  • Oil on canvas
  • 280 x 540,1 cm

While Joan Mitchell took part in the abstract expressionist movement in the United States during the first half of the 1950s, the artist highlights the singularity of her work, which is characterised by the intensity of her palette, her constantly reconsidered search for colour and light, and her intimate bond with landscapes. “I carry my landscape around with me," she once declared. Inspired by her memories, the feelings of them, and by the work of great modern masters (Van Gogh, Cézanne, Matisse, and Monet, among others), Mitchell also found inspiration and equivalences in music and poetry.

This artwork is presented during the "Joan Mitchell, Retrospective" (from 5 October 2022 to 27 February 2023) at the Fondation Louis Vuitton.

© The Estate of Joan Mitchell © Primae / Louis Bourjac

Joan Mitchell

Joan Mitchell was trained and achieved recognition in the New York scene in the 1950s before gradually settling in Paris at the end of the decade and establishing her studio in 1968 in Vétheuil—where Claude Monet lived for several years. 

The importance given to gesture, the choice of imposing formats, and the use of pure colors all place her work within American Abstract Expressionism. But this lyrical grammar encounters an interior version connected to landscape and nature, and conveys its vitality. Mitchell worked from memory. She painted neither reality nor memories, but rather her perception of things and space. Her recurrent use of panel painting enabled her to control the composition of her paintings in which strident, overlapping colors create tension, while contributing to overall harmony.

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