Joan Mitchell

Mitchell's oeuvre generally consisted of large-format canvases where the energy of Abstract Expressionism was tempered by the sensitivity to colour and light of the French Impressionists. Famed art critic Dr. Linda Nochlin described Mitchell's technique as rooted in abstraction, yet often evoking emotional landscapes that blurred the boundaries between abstraction and representation. Mitchell's large diptychs and triptychs are almost environments of their own more than paintings, places where intimacy is felt on a mural scale. Despite her abstractionist leanings, Mitchell was above all a landscape artist who was influenced as much by Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, and Vincent Van Gogh as by her American contemporaries.

In 1985, the Fondation Cartier acquired Mitchell's work, La Grande Vallée VI (1984). This is one of the principal pieces of her series La Grande Vallée, which consists of fifteen canvases, five diptychs and a triptych. The artist created these works in her studio at Vétheuil during a key moment in her artistic career and personal life. Her work has been shown several times by the Fondation Cartier, notably in the exhibitions Les Années 60, La Décade Triomphante (1986) and Azur (1993) at Jouy-en-Josas, and, more recently, in Mémoires Vives (2014) at the Paris Boulevard Raspail venue.