id: 78244 accession number: 2020.245 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/2020.245 updated: Bedford Series: Bedford II, 1981. Joan Mitchell (American, 1925–1992). Color lithograph; sheet: 108.4 x 82.5 cm (42 11/16 x 32 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift 2020.245 © Estate of Joan Mitchell title: Bedford II title in original language: series: Bedford Series series in original language: creation date: 1981 creation date earliest: 1981 creation date latest: 1981 current location: creditline: Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift copyright: © Estate of Joan Mitchell --- culture: America, 20th century technique: color lithograph department: Prints collection: PR - Lithograph type: Print find spot: catalogue raisonne: 364:JM2 --- CREATORS * Joan Mitchell (American, 1925–1992) - artist --- measurements: Sheet: 108.4 x 82.5 cm (42 11/16 x 32 1/2 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: AP 8/16 support materials: inscriptions: inscription: In pencil, recto, lower right: "AP 8/16 Joan Mitchell (signed)" translation: remark: inscription: Blindstamp lower right translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection opening date: 2022-09-11T04:00:00 Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS --- PROVENANCE (Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY, sold to Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley, Cleveland, OH) date: ?-2011 footnotes: citations: Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection, Cleveland, OH date: 2011-2020 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: September 14, 2020 footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: To make this print, Mitchell painted clear sheets of Mylar, which allowed her to layer colors for printing and retain a sense of immediacy. digital description: Abstract painter Joan Mitchell’s monumental lithographs convey her experience of the landscape and combine the complexity, intensity, and fluidity of abstracted lines that are fundamental to her work. In this lithograph, part of her Bedford series, 1981, heavily abstracted, dense bands of colorretain traces of the natural world, while the rich blues and greens represent the inextricable relationship in Mitchell’s work between color, feeling, and landscape. wall description: With expressive marks of varying density, these prints suggest bodies of water that were important to Joan Mitchell’s life and work: the Seine River near her home in France and a small river that passed through Bedford, New York, the location of Tyler Graphics, the lithography shop where she made them. Mitchell described feeling a deep awareness for such bodies of water after spending her childhood near Lake Michigan in Chicago and later living by the East River in Brooklyn. The contrast between dynamic vertical and horizontal marks throughout the lithographic series suggests the constant movement and energy that made water such a continuous inspiration for the artist. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Tyler, Kenneth E. Tyler Graphics: Catalogue Raisonné, 1974-1985. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1987. page number: 364:JM2 url: --- IMAGES