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Joan Mitchell was an American Abstract Expressionist who divided her time between New York and Paris before moving to France permanently in 1959. Known for creating large paintings often composed of two separate panels, her work is full of emotion and life.

Taking inspiration from the outdoors, many of her abstract compositions evoke an imagined landscape made of form and color. Like many Abstract Expressionists, Mitchell focused on conveying emotion rather than painting something recognizable, and her paintings are filled with quick, gestural, and sometimes violent brushstrokes.

Born in Chicago, Mitchell received both a BFA and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She moved to New York in 1947 and then traveled to Europe the following year, visiting France, Spain, and Italy. In 1949 she married American publisher Barney Rosset in Paris. The marriage was short-lived and ended in 1952. Three years later she began a romance with Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle that lasted for much of the remainder of her life.

Influenced by van Gogh, Cézanne, Kandinsky, Franz Kline, and de Kooning, Mitchell’s first solo show was at The New Gallery in New York in 1952. The year before her work was displayed in The Ninth Street Show with other contemporary artists, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Hans Hofmann.These shows brought critical attention and she was soon after considered as one of the leading artists of the New York School.

In the 1960s the bright colors in Mitchell’s work were replaced by neutral hues focused in dense concentrations. She described the motivation for her work of this period as trying convey the essence of a dying sunflower. The artist’s later life was plagued by illness. In 1984 she was diagnosed with oral cancer and had surgery that left her with a dead jawbone. Her post cancer work, including Faded Air; Faded Air II; the cycle A Few Days; the cycle Before, Again; and Then, Last Time reflect the psychological changes of living with cancer. A year later she had hip replacement surgery, and, during rehabilitation, began painting in watercolor. In 1992 Mitchell was diagnosed with lung cancer and died soon after in Paris.

Located in New York, the Joan Mitchell Foundation was founded in her memory and is a center for the arts that awards grants and scholarships to artists and artist collectives.