Lot Description
Joan Mitchell (1925-1992)
Allo, Amélie
signed 'Joan Mitchell' (lower right)
oil on canvas
110½ x 71½ in. (280.6 x 181.6 cm.)
Painted in 1973.
Provenance
Xavier Fourcade, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Joan Mitchell, March-May 1974.
The Arts Club of Chicago, Recent Paintings, September-November 1974, no. 6.
Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton Collects, January 26-April 2005.
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Lot Notes
Joan Mitchell's resplendent painting Allo, Amélie was painted while the artist was living in Vétheuil, France, during an intensely fertile period in her career. Suspended within an airy expanse of white canvas, floating clouds of tremulous color hover within the upper register, some heavy with thick impasto while others display the shimmering translucency of watercolor. The painting derives its name from Jean-Paul Riopelle's daughter, Sylvie, whose daughter, Amélie, was born in 1973, the year the painting was created. It corresponds to another painting of the same era, Bonjour Julie, which celebrates the birth of Riopelle's granddaughter, Julie, in 1971.
Typical to this period, Mitchell constructively integrates the color white -- by simply leaving the canvas bare in some areas or building up heavy impasto in others, as seen in the upper left quadrant. The technique recalls that of Mitchell's "Field Series," which were painted between 1971 and 1973. Jane Livingstone described: "now she used the white ground as an intensely enlivened part of the picture space, not as background, but as part of a cradle, or receptacle, for the passages of brilliantly worked color. Evocations of sunlight on flowering trees, or foliage reflected in shimmering water, elevate these paintings to a level of the most intense lyricism (J. Livingstone, The Paintings of Joan Mitchell, New York, 2002, p. 34). Allo Amélie captures the bucolic environs of Vétheuil, which breathed new life into Mitchell's work, resulting in an era of bold experimentation and vivid, dazzling coloration.
Moving to Vétheuil in the late 1960s, Mitchell literally immersed herself within the landscape. The two-acre stretch of land sat on a dramatic bluff that overlooked the Seine, with sweeping views that followed the river as it snaked and rounded the curves of the hillside, flowing into a reservoir that appeared to literally "float" along the horizon. Claude Monet once owned a home on the same property, in what is now the gardener's cottage. It is no doubt that both artists could not help but be influenced by the dazzling light and atmosphere of Vétheuil that changed throughout the day and along with the seasons.
Housed in a separate stone building, Mitchell's studio there provided considerably more space than her Paris studio on the Rue Frémincourt. It was a short walk from her kitchen, and Mitchell often worked barefoot. She was able to throw open the studio doors with ease, moving her large-scale canvases around without much effort. Mitchell often worked late into the night, listening to music -- Mozart, Stravinsky, Bach and sometimes jazz.
The pastoral beauty of Vétheuil took Mitchell's work in new directions. She started incorporating bolder colors into even larger canvases, experimenting now with diptychs, triptychs and polyptychs. In Allo, Amélie, Mitchell's prowess as a superb colorist is revealed; the thick impasto of the color yellow recalls the sunflowers which grew in her garden at Vetheuil, and she lavishes extra attention here, building up to a thick impasto, much like the work of Van Gogh. Most striking, however, is the arrangement of color within planes, or blocks, which call to mind the late watercolors of Cézanne or the boldness of Hofmann's "slab" paintings.
Vincent Van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1889.
Joan Mitchell outside of her studio, Vétheuil. Photo by: Edouard Boubat. Estate of Joan Mitchell.
Joan Mitchell dans son jardin, Vétheuil, 1992.
Joan Mitchell, Vétheuil, 1971.
