Commonly grouped together as part of the “Second Generation” within Abstract Expressionism, New York School painters Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) and Wolf Kahn (1927-2020) were friends and admirers of each other's work. In 1956, Kahn was living in Venice, Italy, where he met artist Emily Mason, whom he would marry in 1957. Kahn called upon Mitchell in her Paris studio prior to returning to New York City with Mason. While visiting Mitchell, Kahn acquired the present work, Untitled, 1958, which remained in his private collection until his death in 2020. The painting then passed to Kahn and Mason's daughter, Cecily, who was born in 1959 shortly after their return to New York.
Modest in scale compared to some of Mitchell's monumental compositions, which can extend to multiple canvases, Untitled, 1958 nonetheless powerfully conjures physical sensations of sound, light, movement, and texture. Relatively free of gestures along its edges, the activity of this painting gathers toward its dense, dynamic center. This inward movement, characterized by interlocking colors, forms, and brushstrokes, presents a contested picture plane. Slashing strokes, color spread into color, and the infinite range of marks from transparent to opaque—each of these are hallmarks of Mitchell's best work of the late 1950s. White paint is used as both figure and ground, like a bricklayer uses mortar for construction adhesive.
Untitled, 1958 is a premier example of what art historian Linda Nochlin has called the "battle between containment and chaos" in the works of Joan Mitchell.
Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work. This is just a use of space and form: it's an ambivalence of forms and space.
Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell 1925–1992
A Chicago native, Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell was born in 1925. Her father was a dermatologist and her mother a poet. Mitchell attended the Francis W. Parker School in Lincoln Park, where she met the writer and artist Edward Gorey. In her youth, Mitchell was athletic, taking part in figure skating, diving, and horseback riding. The discipline and competitiveness required in these pursuits later fed into Mitchell's art practice. She went to Smith College for her bachelor's degree and the Art Institute of Chicago for her master's. Between these programs, Mitchell lived in France for a year on a travel fellowship. This time abroad gave Mitchell an opportunity to delve into abstraction in a concentrated manner. She settled in New York City upon returning and became part of the celebrated New York School of painters and poets for most of the 1950s.
While some consider Mitchell a member of the so-called "Second Generation" of Abstract Expressionism—with Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning most often seen as the forerunners of this influential, mid-century movement—she was consciously working through her own conceptions of abstract form, color, and theory during the same period. Mitchell was part of the important 9th Street Show in 1951. Throughout the 1950s, works by Mitchell were already being acquired for the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. Starting in 1955, Mitchell began splitting her time between New York City and Paris. She would ultimately move to Vétheuil, a small town northwest of Paris, in 1968 and remain there until her death in Paris in 1992.
Mitchell drew inspiration from the world around her even though her work was not usually representational. She sought to turn her impressions of nature and her memories into striking abstract images full of feeling. Despite being a passionate, complicated person, who could be contentious at times, Mitchell was also fiercely loyal to her friends, artistic and otherwise, and she also offered herself as an active mentor to several young artists who came to stay at her home in Vétheuil over the years. This generosity of spirit extended beyond Mitchell's passing with the establishment, via her will, of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, which not only looks after Mitchell's legacy, but provides support and attention for other artists.
During her lifetime, Mitchell was exhibited widely in America and Europe. The Whitney Museum held an early retrospective focusing on Mitchell in 1974. The Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris feted Mitchell with a solo exhibition in 1982, making her the first female American artist to be so honored. In 1988, a traveling Mitchell retrospective visited the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and five other institutions around the country. More recently, in 2021 and 2022, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art teamed up to present a retrospective that spanned Mitchell's entire career and reevaluated her significant contributions to Abstract Expressionism.
Auction Results Joan Mitchell
