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| Noël - Joan Mitchell signed "Joan Mitchell" lower right oil on canvas 80 1/2 x 78 3/4 in. (204.5 x 200 cm) Painted in 1961-1962. Courtesy of Phillips |
The oil-on-canvas, Noël exemplifies the rich painterly language - explosions of color articulated by moments of thick impasto, dripping fields of pant, rapid brushstrokes - for which Joan Mitchell is acclaimed.
In Michael Brenson’s review in The New York Times, he described the power of the painting, its lyricism, its center like two squalling cats. He made the point that a lot of these paintings seem to revolve around the conflict between two primary areas of activity—and you certainly see that in Noël. The juxtaposition of the underlying green mass becomes the stage set for establishing the chromatic contrast between this hot, bright orangey-red and the whole range of greens.
Offered from an anonymous private collector, this marks the first time the work has appeared on the market since 1995.
“Joan Mitchell’s large-scale paintings from this period are rarely seen on the auction market,” Robert Manley, Phillips Deputy Chairman and Worldwide Co-Head of 20th-century and Contemporary Art, said in a statement. “Appreciation of her work has quickened over the last few years, during which we have seen some of her highest prices ever achieved at auction.”
Mitchell (1925-1992) was a commercially successful Abstract Expressionist artist during her lifetime, and many of her paintings are held at prestigious museums and art institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; as well as the Tate Gallery in London and the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris.
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