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Joan Mitchell
American, 1925-1992

City Landscape, 1955

Oil on linen
203.2 x 203.2 cm (80 x 80 in.), unframed
Signed: recto: "J. Mitchell" (lower right in black paint); not inscribed on verso
Gift of Society for Contemporary American Art, 1958.193

© The Estate of Joan Mitchell

A member of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, Joan Mitchell was known for painting big, light-filled abstractions, animated by loosely applied skeins of bright color, infused with the energy and excitement of a large metropolis. In City Landscape, a tangle of pale pink, scarlet, mustard, sienna, and black hues threatens to coagulate or erupt. The title suggests that this ganglion of pigments evokes the nerves or arteries of a city. The sense of spontaneity conveyed in City Landscape belies Mitchell’s methods. Unlike many of her contemporaries, who were dubbed action painters, Mitchell worked slowly and deliberately. “I paint a little,” she said. “Then I sit and look at the painting, sometimes for hours. Eventually, the painting tells me what to do.”

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, “Vanguard 1955: A Painter’s Selection of New American Paintings,” October 23–December 5, 1955, curated by Kyle Morris, cat. 39 (ill.), as “Painting.”

Art Institute of Chicago, “18th Annual Society for Contemporary American Art Exhibition,” May 8–June 8, 1958, no cat.

Art Institute of Chicago, “26th Annual Society for Contemporary American Art Exhibition,” April 8–May 10, 1966, no cat.

Art Institute of Chicago, “Art in Illinois, In Honor of the Illinois Sesquicentennial,” June 15–September 8, 1968, p. 8.

Washington, D. C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, “Joan Mitchell,” February 27–May 1, 1988, cat. by Judith E. Bernstock; traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 26–July 17, 1988, Buffalo, Albright–Knox Art Gallery, September 17–November 6, 1988, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, December 2, 1988–January 29, 1989, and Ithaca, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, February 26–April 23, 1989, pp. 31–32 (color ill.), 35.

Art Institute of Chicago, “From America’s Studio: Twelve Contemporary Masers,” May 10–June 14, 1992, organized by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, p. 61.

New York, Robert Miller Gallery, “Joan Mitchell: Paintings 1950 to 1955,” May 5–June 5, 1998, n.pag. (color ill.).

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, “The Paintings of Joan Mitchell,” June 20–September 29, 2002, cat. by Jane Livingston et al.; traveled to Birmingham Museum of Art, June 27–August 31, 2003, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, September 21, 2003–January 7, 2004, and Des Moines Art Center, January 31–April 25, 2004 (New York, Birmingham, and Fort Worth only), pp. 22–23, pl. 6 (color ill.).

Publication History

“Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago” (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), p. 315.

Franz Schulze, “Society for Contemporary Art: 1940–1980” (Art Institute of Chicago/Congress Printing Company, 1980), pp. 24 (ill.), 26, 31 (photo), 51 (ill.).

Michel Waldberg, “Joan Mitchell” (Éditions de la différence, 1992), p. 16.

“Joan Mitchell: Paintings 1956 to 1958,” exh. cat. (Robert Miller Gallery, 1996), n.pag.

James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein, “The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture” (Hudson Hills Press, 1996), p. 107 (color ill.).

Klaus Kertess, “Joan Mitchell” (Harry N. Abrams, 1997), pp. 180–81.

James N. Wood, “Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago,” 2nd ed. (Art Institute of Chicago/Hudson Hills Press, 1999), p. 152 (color ill.).

“Society for Contemporary Art: 1940–2000, 60th Anniversary” (Society for Contemporary Art/JNL Graphic Design, 2000), pp. 4, 68 (color ill.), 69 (color ill., detail).

Jay A. Clarke, “Adrienne Farb and the Anti-Hip of Abstraction,” in Jay A. Clarke and Joanna E. Ziegler, eds., “The Spiritual Landscapes of Adrienne Farb: 1980–2006,” exh. cat. (Worcester, Mass.: Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, 2006), pp. 43–44 (color ill.).

Ownership History

Stable Gallery, New York, by 1958; sold to the Art Institute, 1958.