Joan Mitchell
East Ninth Street1956

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Large vertical abstract oil painting with sweeping crimson and ochre gestural strokes over a pale ground, with a deep blue band along the lower edge

Artist or Maker: Joan Mitchell
United States, Illinois, Chicago, 1925-1992
Title: East Ninth Street
Place Made: United States
Date Made: 1956
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 80 × 64 in. (203.2 × 162.56 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of William Heller, Inc.
Accession Number: M.62.62
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: Joan Mitchell painted East Ninth Street for an exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery, which showed avant-garde works by artists such as Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock, among others. Mitchell’s title may refer to the street where she had her first studio in New York, as well as the Ninth Street Exhibition, a landmark for Abstract Expressionist painting curated by critic Clement Greenberg in 1951.

Greenwich Village was the heart of a close yet contentious art community in the 1940s–50s, anchored by the Eighth Street Club (“The Club”), a loft for round- table and panel discussions, and the Cedar Tavern, where artists and critics socialized. Mitchell was one of the few women permitted to join The Club and served as an advocate for other female painters.

Wall label, 2021.
Selected Bibliography: Marter, Joan, ed. Women of Abstract Expressionism. Denver: Denver Art Museum; New Haven: In association with Yale University Press, 2016.
Roberts, Sarah, and Katy Siegel, editors. Joan Mitchell. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2020.
Copyright: © Estate of Joan Mitchell

Joan Mitchell
East Ninth Street1956

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Artist or Maker: Joan Mitchell
United States, Illinois, Chicago, 1925-1992
Title: East Ninth Street
Place Made: United States
Date Made: 1956
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 80 × 64 in. (203.2 × 162.56 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of William Heller, Inc.
Accession Number: M.62.62
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: Joan Mitchell painted East Ninth Street for an exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery, which showed avant-garde works by artists such as Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock, among others. Mitchell’s title may refer to the street where she had her first studio in New York, as well as the Ninth Street Exhibition, a landmark for Abstract Expressionist painting curated by critic Clement Greenberg in 1951.

Greenwich Village was the heart of a close yet contentious art community in the 1940s–50s, anchored by the Eighth Street Club (“The Club”), a loft for round- table and panel discussions, and the Cedar Tavern, where artists and critics socialized. Mitchell was one of the few women permitted to join The Club and served as an advocate for other female painters.

Wall label, 2021.
Selected Bibliography: Marter, Joan, ed. Women of Abstract Expressionism. Denver: Denver Art Museum; New Haven: In association with Yale University Press, 2016.
Roberts, Sarah, and Katy Siegel, editors. Joan Mitchell. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2020.