Trees I

A leading American painter and printmaker, Joan Mitchell was a contemporary of Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell among the artists of the so-called second generation of the Abstract Expressionists. She is widely regarded as one of the supreme colorists of that movement. Her lyrical abstractions are generally inspired by actual entities found in nature, such as fields, wooded landscapes, or studies of flowers. Commenting on Mitchell's work, art critic E.C. Goossen noted, The Abstract Expressionist generation out of which she came was forever searching for abstract subject matter with transcendent implications, even though it professed to believe that art was its own message... But unlike those contemporary painters who 'discover' their subject in the process of painting, Mitchell works from an idea and builds on it. On this, critic Jed Perl remarked, The best Mitchells are authentically civilized experiences. Our appetites are focused and clarified. Her colors are the beautiful colors of the world: tans of flesh and greens of landscape, but also the purple of the iris and the tawny yellow of the pear. A prolific printmaker, Mitchell produced more than 200 editioned prints during her lifetime, collaborating with master printers at some of the world's leading print workshops.