News

The Fondation is currently closed. It will reopen on October 9th for the "Gustave Fayet, Collector - Designer. Icons of Modern Art" exhibition".

Red Tree

  • 1976
  • Joan Mitchell
  • Oil on canvas
  • 279,4 x 160,0 cm

Joan Mitchell works from memory; she paints neither reality nor her memories, but her perception of things and of space. Her use of polyptychs is a recurring feature, enabling her to structure the composition of her paintings, in which the stridency of the superimposed colours creates tension whilst contributing to the overall harmony.

The structure of a tree is thus recognisable in Red Tree (1976): the mass of its foliage, the point where its branches emerge from the top of its trunk. Black, cream, red or reddish lines evoke its branches and leaves, whilst the white of the canvas represents the light filtering through the foliage.

Crédit artiste : © The Estate of Joan Mitchell Crédit photographique : © Primae / David Bordes

Hangs

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.

Read more

In the same hang