The Art, Design & Architecture Museum joins in the international centennial celebration of the birth of artist Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) with a spotlight exhibition of her work in the permanent collection.

Gifted to the AD&A Museum in 1985, Sunflower (1970) is part of a series dedicated to the sunflower that began in the late 1960s and continued until Mitchell’s passing. Inspired by her childhood experience of seeing Vincent van Gogh’s sunflower paintings in her home city of Chicago, Mitchell returned to the significance of the sunflower in her late life, commenting that sunflowers are, “like people to me.” Abstracted yet palpable, the painting reflects on the unique character of the sunflower and its life cycle–at once filled with a bright vitality that also hints at darkness and decay.

Joan Mitchell is widely recognized as one of the most significant American artists of the post-war era. Her abstract paintings are distinguished by their physicality, daring use of color, and personal interpretation of the natural world.

A native of Chicago, Mitchell studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Upon graduating in 1947, she spent over a year in France before settling in New York in late 1949. There, she became an active participant in the “New York School” of painters and poets, exploring different approaches to composition and gesture as part of the emerging Abstract Expressionist movement.

Over the next four decades, Mitchell dedicated herself to the single-minded pursuit of abstract painting of the highest order, while moving between New York, Paris, and later the French countryside in Vétheuil, where she made her home from 1968 until her death in 1992. Throughout her long and varied career, Mitchell drew on experiences and memories of the world around her—particularly views of cities, fields, rivers, lakes, and trees—as sources for her work. She once said, "I carry my landscapes around with me."

This presentation is organized by the Art, Design & Architecture Museum and is curated by Ana Briz, AD&A Museum Assistant Director and Curator of Exhibitions. Special thanks to the Joan Mitchell Foundation for providing the video Joan Mitchell: An Introduction that is on view. The exhibition is made possible thanks to the generous support of the AD&A Museum Council.