Joan Mitchell

The painter Joan Mitchell has long been hailed as a formidable creative force. She first attained critical acclaim and success in the male-dominated abstract expressionist circles of 1950s New York, then spent over three decades in France creating distinctive abstract paintings that pulse with energy and color and draw on landscape, memory, poetry, and music.

With its world premiere at SFMOMA and co-organized with the Baltimore Museum of Art, Joan Mitchell is a comprehensive retrospective featuring over eighty distinguished works. This exhibition includes rarely seen early paintings and drawings that established Mitchell’s career, along with large-scale multi-panel masterpieces from her later years that demonstrate her mastery of color. Suites of paintings, sketchbooks, and drawings, as well as an illuminating selection of the artist’s letters and photographs, open a new window into the richness, range, and ambition of Mitchell’s deeply influential and barrier-breaking creative practice.

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