"La Vie en Rose"

Mitchell ranks among the most eloquent interpreters of allover gestural painting associated with Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s. After her permanent move to France from New York in 1959, she continued to expand her abstract vocabulary by responding to her natural surroundings, in a way that recalls Claude Monet’s Impressionist views of his gardens at Giverny. The four joined canvases of La Vie en Rose (titled after Edith Piaf’s famed romantic song of the 1940s) present an immersive, lilac-tinted panorama activated by staccato but lyrical brushwork in black, lavender, pink, and gray hues. The panels function as distinct episodes or stanzas that convey sensory responses and feelings that unfold over time, while the picture plane alternatively asserts itself and fades away into hazy atmosphere.

Credit: Anonymous Gift and Purchase, George A. Hearn Fund, by exchange, 1991