Trees (black and red)

Joan Mitchell’s art was inspired by her memories and love of landscapes. 'I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me,' she once said.1 When looking at these vibrant, gestural works it would be easy to assume that she was a quick and spontaneous artist, but this was not the case. Wanting to be accurate, Mitchell would stop and consider, often from afar, each line and brushstroke. Her paintings would usually take months to complete.

Mitchell was also an accomplished printmaker and found that her painting technique adapted beautifully to the medium, which she utilised throughout her career. Shortly before her death, she produced a large number of lithographs of trees, weeds and sunflowers, including ‘Trees (black and red)’. The mature trees of her beloved gardens at Vétheuil, France, may have been the inspiration for this print, or possibly ‘Two poplars on a road through the hills’ 1889 by Vincent van Gogh, an artist she greatly admired.

Mitchell was born in Chicago in 1925. After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949, she moved to New York where she quickly became involved in the downtown avant-garde art scene. In 1951 she was included in the now legendary ‘Ninth street show’, an artist-led exhibition that launched abstract expressionism as a major international art movement. Mitchell was one of only 11 women out of the 72 artists that participated. From 1955–59 Mitchell divided her time between New York and Paris and in 1959 relocated permanently to France, ultimately settling in Vétheuil, a small town northwest of Paris, where she continued to live and work until her death in 1992.

1. John Baur, ‘Nature in abstraction: the relation of abstract painting and sculpture to nature in twentieth century American art’, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1958, p 75.