Joan Mitchell and Claude Monet will be honored on the occasion of a joint exhibition of their works at the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
An unprecedented dialogue
The “Monet – Mitchell” exhibition stages an unprecedented dialogue between the works of two exceptional artists, Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), who left their mark not only on their time but on generations. of painters. It will be introduced by a retrospective exhibition “Joan Mitchell” which will allow the discovery of his work by the general French and European public. “The Claude Monet – Joan Mitchell Dialogue” and the “Joan Mitchell Retrospective” show their singular perceptions of the same composite landscape, often expressed in particularly immersive formats. Facing the same landscape, that of the banks of the Seine, the two artists share an acute sensitivity to light and colors, the interplay of which constitutes the foundation of their art.
Visual and thematic correspondences
Mitchell seeks their association in a living memory, constantly solicited; the late evolution of Monet is characterized by the abandonment of the outline of forms in favor of only color through the capture of a fleeting light. Without figurative landmarks, the plant, aquatic and atmospheric worlds of Monet and Mitchell express their fusional and lyrical relationship to the landscape. Through some sixty emblematic works by the two artists, the exhibition offers the public an enchanting and sensitive journey, punctuated by remarkable visual and thematic correspondences. Echoing the exhibition “Monet-Mitchell” and in order to discover and better understand the work of Joan Mitchell by the general public, the Foundation presents, in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), the most important retrospective of Joan Mitchell in Europe for thirty years.
Around fifty works
The exhibition brings together around fifty works over 1,000 m2, offering a new version of the exhibition presented in the United States in recent months with specific loans – among others from the Center Pompidou and the Museum of the Royal Monastery of Brou – which are complemented by around ten works from the Louis Vuitton Foundation Collection. If in the first half of the 1950s, Joan Mitchell took part in the American scene marked by abstract expressionism, the exhibition demonstrates the singularity of her painting, characterized by the intensity of her palette, her always reconsidered search for color and light and its intimate relationship to landscapes: “I carry my landscape around with me”.
One of the most lively voices in painting
Nourished by memories magnified by the exercise of painting and feelings amplified by his knowledge of the great modern masters (Van Gogh, Cézanne, Matisse, Monet…), the art of Joan Mitchell also finds its sources and its equivalences in music. and poetry, as highlighted by several documents presented here. The retrospective focuses on the life and work of an artist now considered one of the most lively voices in painting in the second half of the 20th century.
Fondation Louis Vuitton
From october 2022
8 Av. du Mahatma Gandhi, 75016 Paris
