Joan Mitchell, painting was her territory

Bob, big tinted glasses framed by a long brown fringe, Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), cigarette in mouth, is sitting on the terrace of her house located in a pretty village of Vexin, facing the Seine valley. It was in Vétheuil that this photo was taken, reproduced at the entrance to the exhibition that the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is devoting to the artist, and which accompanies a hanging in the form of a dialogue with Claude Monnet. Because it is in this town, rightly made famous by the paintings of the impressionist, and where she lived between 1968 and her death, that the American painted her most beautiful works. There she shared her life with her companion and lover, the flamboyant Quebec painter Jean-Paul Riopelle.