Joan Mitchell: Paintings, 1979–1985

About This Exhibition

David Zwirner presents an exhibition of paintings by Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) focusing on the years 1979 to 1985, a significant and deeply generative period within her decades-long career, on view at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York.

For Mitchell, this period, which included her important 1982 solo exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, was a time of profound artistic development, growth, and focus on the possibilities of painting. As she became even more fully immersed in daily life at her Vétheuil, France, property—surrounded by lush gardens, and challenged and inspired by new creative relationships—Mitchell’s studio practice flourished, and her work became even more ambitious and expansive.

The exhibition will include a selection of the dynamic and resolved canvases Mitchell produced during this period in a range of formats, from ambitiously scaled multipanel works that are among the largest of her career to intimate single-canvas compositions, demonstrating her transition from the controlled structure of her mid-to-late 1970s paintings to the virtuosic allover compositions of the 1980s. Executed in an increasingly bold palette, these works exemplify her nuanced mastery of composition, scale, and color.

Featuring paintings from both public and private collections, as well as from the holdings of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, this show will be the gallery’s second exhibition of Mitchell’s work since having announced exclusive representation of the Foundation in 2018. On the occasion of the exhibition, David Zwirner Books will publish a fully illustrated catalogue with newly commissioned scholarship on the artist’s work.

See details at David Zwirner