Description:

Joan Mitchell
American, (1925-1992)
Champs (Carnegie Hall Centennial Fine Art Portfolio)
color lithograph, ed. 24/60
Joan Mitchell was born in Chicago (1925) and attended SAIC (the School of the Art Institute of Chicago). From there she studied abroad in France, an experience that changed her life. After painting in New York for a few years, by 1959 she permanently relocated to France, taking up residence in Vétheuil. Her home there overlooked the former home of Claude Monet who, about 50 years earlier, had painted many scenes of this same place located northwest of Paris (Monet eventually moved a few km farther away to Giverny). Mitchell is categorised as having been part of the second generation of abstractionists, and despite being a female artist in what was a man's world, she was incredibly successful and prolific, eventually creating a body of over 550 works (paintings, prints, pastels on paper). But her abstractions, often designed in the form of diptychs or polyptychs, were not always fully abstract but instead firmly grounded in a love of nature often featuring sunflowers, fields, trees, gardens, landscapes, etc. So like Monet, Mitchell also lived in this same part of the world in solitude, intensely involved in a relationship with essence of the natural world. Unlike Monet though, Mitchell did not paint en plein air but worked inside a studio and apparently often at nighttime. In a nutshell, her philosophy is this: "I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me—and remembered feelings of them, which of course become transformed. I could certainly never mirror nature. I would like more to paint what it leaves with me." The Saint Louis Art Museum owns works by both painters and featured them and many others in a large show that originated at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in winter 2023 called "Monet/ Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape" (SLAM, March-June 2023). Her work is part of the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Whitney in NYC, the Art Institute of Chicago, MOMA, and many others. More information on Mitchell can be found at her foundation's website: www.joanmitchellfoundation.org.

This print, signed and numbered 24/60, is entitled "Champs" (‘fields' in English), made in the same year as four other paintings with the same exact name ("Champs") and alongside several others entitled Marge (Margins), Taillade (Slash), Sunflowers, and Rivière (River)—all from 1990. Here and elsewhere Mitchell boiled down her impression from nature into a work of synthesised feeling about what she experienced when outside. The pure and bright colors featured in this version of "Champs" evoke a late fall or early wintry landscape with a grey and white sky, red leaves changing color, dark blues and black from groundcover at rest, and a very small remaining hint of green. This print represents how Mitchell felt outside…how does it make you feel?

Mitchell was one of 16 artists whose work had been chosen to be made into a series of 60 highly collectable color lithographs created for the Centennial Anniversary of Carnegie Hall in 1990. In this auction Link is featuring several prints (all numbered 24/60, as collected by the same individual) featuring works by 5 of the original group of 16: Joan Mitchell, Ed Ruscha, George Baselitz, Alex Katz and Larry Rivers.

signed and numbered in pencil lower margin, framed.

  • Dimensions: 60 x 40 inches
  • Medium: color lithograph, ed. 24/60
  • Condition: This print is float-mounted, and has full margins with deckled edges. It has not been removed from its frame but appears to have been adhered from the reverse in the four corners. The paper is clean and bright, with no stains, creases, or tears. There are a few faint spots of foxing at the extreme right edge at the top and bottom. These are noticeable only on close inspection. Overall, this piece appears to be in excellent condition.

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October 21, 2023 10:00 AM CDT
St. Louis, MO, US

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