Four paintings by the pioneering Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell (1925-92) will hit the auction block next month at Sotheby’s in New York, where they are collectively expected to fetch between $36m and $51.5m. The quartet of canvases, which will go under the hammer during the auction house’s evening sale of contemporary art on 13 May, all come from the same unnamed private collection.
The earliest work in the group, Untitled (around 1955), was completed approximately three years after Mitchell’s first solo show in New York, at the height of the frenzy for Abstract Expressionism. With its dripping streaks of red paint and clusters of abstract brushwork, it is typical of her earliest mature paintings. Sotheby's estimates it will sell for between $8m and $12m.
Joan Mitchell, Untitled, around 1955, private collection © Estate of Joan Mitchell
Mitchell painted the work from the group with the highest estimate, Noon (around 1969), the year after she relocated permanently to an estate in Vétheuil, a village northwest of Paris, on which Claude Monet had previously lived. The composition’s parade of luminous colours and forms echoes her Impressionist predecessor's palette, all the while remaining firmly abstract in its evocation of a sun-splashed, mid-day scene. It is expected to bring between $15m and $20m.
Also included in the group is Untitled (around 1973), a comparatively pared-down composition dominated by blocks of blue and orange, with an estimate of $1m to $1.5m. The latest work of the four, the large diptych Ground (1989), features the wide brushstrokes typical of paintings from the last years of Mitchell’s life. Above a ground of light pink, the work’s two canvases are a roiling layering of oranges, greens and blues that belie the artist's waning health during this period.
Joan Mitchell, Ground, 1989, private collection © Estate of Joan Mitchell
“This concise and expertly curated group of paintings marks an unprecedented opportunity to trace Mitchell’s painterly evolution and witness the ways in which her mastery took shape across decades,” said Lucius Elliott, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art evening auctions in New York, in a statement. “It is through Mitchell’s exploration of natural forms that she transformed her work to a wholly new expression of abstraction and representation, expertly riding the knife edge to achieve a visual style that is unmistakably her own.”
The quatro of major Mitchells comes to auction at a moment of heightened interest in her work at museums, in the market and in the broader culture. A travelling retrospective was recently on view at SFMOMA (in 2021-22) and the Baltimore Museum of Art (in 2022). It was followed by a major show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris pairing Mitchell's work with Monet’s. Last November, Christie’s set a new auction record for the artist when it sold her towering composition Untitled (around 1959) for $25m ($29.1m with fees). And for fans who have been priced out of the Mitchell market, she may soon be coming to streaming through a television adaptation of Mary Gabriel’s 2018 book Ninth Street Women that is reportedly in the works for Amazon.
Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1973, private collection © Estate of Joan Mitchell
News of the four Mitchell paintings’ consignment to Sotheby’s comes just one day after the auction house revealed another major lot for its spring sales that was made by a female master long overshadowed by her male peers: the British Mexican Surrealist Leonora Carrington’s mystical painting Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945), which is expected to reset her auction record by selling for between $12m and $18m. (It comes backed by a guarantee.)
Also on offer this auction season in New York will be a bevy of paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat at Christie’s, Phillips and Sotheby’s; Francis Bacon’s first full-scale portrait of his lover George Dyer, estimated by Sotheby’s to bring between $30m and $50m; a scintillating Lucio Fontana work that Sotheby’s anticipates will fetch between $20m and $30m; and a Monet riverscape partially owned by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art that Christie’s hopes will splash down between $18m and $25m.