Joan Mitchell - Hardcover

Ohlsen, Nils

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3868280073 ISBN 13: 9783868280074

Publisher: Kehrer Verlag, 2009

Synopsis

This publication on Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) allows us to rediscover an artist whose life’s work—with its anarchistic conception, urge for freedom, and energy-filled gestures and colors—is every bit as compelling as that of her male peers. Between 1950 and 1955, Mitchell, as a recognized member of the abstract expressionist circle, found her independent pictorial language. The timeless motif of her painting is always life in its purest form: as movement, transformation, constant action, reaction, and observation.

The publication includes works from important American and French collections as well as from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York.

About this title

Review:

As an artist, Joan Mitchell's talents and significance were often overshadowed by the time and place of her work. While living in New York in the 1950s, for instance, she had to share a stage with such luminaries as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, a feat further complicated by her gender. Second, she chose to live in France for the last decades of her life, causing her to slip from the collective memory of most Americans. Regardless of this undeservedly diminished stature, Mitchell will go down in history as a leader of the Abstract Expressionist movement, leaving behind an impressive and influential body of work. Joan Mitchell is very much a labor of love, since, in her will, the artist asked her longtime friend Klaus Kertess to write the text for this collection, a task that he completes with style and skill. Along with revealing her personality and motivations, Kertess does an admirable job of detailing the impressive artistic circles Mitchell ran in while living in Chicago, New York, and Paris. This volume exhibits 120 pieces of her work, as well as a detailed and comprehensive biographical chronology that is sure to help jog some memories.

About the Author:

oan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 - October 30, 1992) was a 'Second Generation' Abstract Expressionist painter. Along with Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, and Helen Frankenthaler she was one of her era's few female painters to gain critical and public acclaim. Her paintings and editioned prints can be seen in major museums and collections across America and Europe. Nils Ohlsen is director of the Kunsthalle Emden, Germany. He has published on many artists, e.g. Emil Nolde or Per Kirkeby.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kehrer Verlag
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 3868280073
• ISBN 13: 9783868280074
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 152