Blue Tree
Artist
Joan Mitchell
(American, 1925–1992)
Dateabout 1964
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionscanvas: 245.4 x 198.1 cm (96 5/8 x 78 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineMuseum Purchase
Object number1965.392
Label TextUnlike many of her contemporaries, Mitchell turned to the outside world rather than the inner one for her subjects. The complex combinations of pure pigments with colors that mix on the canvas, dense paint with liquid drips, and flatness with deep space that we see in Blue Tree are the result of deliberation, spontaneity, and confidence. An amorphous mass of concentrated passages of green and blue is surrounded by airy whites that appear ambiguously both under and over it. Mitchell’s intention was not to depict nature but “to paint what [nature] leaves me with”—the sensations and memories.ProvenanceAcquisition from Stable Gallery, New York NY, Feburary 3, 1966.On View
Not on view
