Painting Collection

Joan Mitchell

Untitled

(1925 - 1992)
Untitled
1965
oil and charcoal on canvas
20 3/4 x 17 5/8 x 1 1/2 in.
Gift from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art

The Corcoran Gallery of Art was one of the first private museums in the United States, established in 1869 by William Wilson Corcoran and expanded in 1880 to include the Corcoran College of Art and Design with the mission ‘dedicated to art and used solely for the purpose of encouraging the American genius.’ In 2014, the Corcoran transferred the college to the George Washington University and distributed the works from its Collection to museums and institutions in Washington, D.C.

This Untitled painting by Joan Mitchell is small—measuring around a foot and a half tall—but it is packed with color. The center of the picture is filled with deep blues, gem-like purples, and rich reds, surrounded by neutral colors at the outer edges. This explosion of color is applied with thick yet energetic brushstrokes that emerge from the canvas in supple drips and smears. Born in Chicago, Mitchell was associated with the Abstract Expressionist artists in New York by the early 1950s, one of the few women to be part of this group. However, she moved to France in 1959, eventually finding her home in Vétheuil in 1968, near Claude Monet’s Giverny estate. Throughout her career, Mitchell absorbed her surroundings into her paintings, creating abstract pictures that evoked her visual memories of the natural world. She said: “I’m trying to remember what I felt about a certain cypress tree and I feel if I remember it, it will last me quite a long time.” Mitchell made this 1965 picture as part of a series of 14 small canvases with vibrant colors drawn from stops on the Paris subway.