Masterpiece Story: Salut Tom by Joan Mitchell

Joan Mitchell’s Life and Career

Born in Chicago, Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before moving to New York in the late 1940s. Immersed in the Abstract Expressionist movement, she became associated with artists like Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and the New York School. However, unlike many of her contemporaries, she resisted the notion of pure gestural abstraction as a form of action painting. Instead, her work retained deep emotional connections to nature, poetry, and personal experience, albeit using gestural, sometimes violent brushwork.

By the late 1950s, Mitchell had relocated to France, where she established a studio in Vétheuil, a village near Giverny, famously associated with Claude Monet. This move deepened her engagement with light, color, and the landscapes that often informed her paintings. Throughout her career, she exhibited extensively in Europe and the USA, remaining faithful to her style based on abstraction from the early 1950s.

Salut Tom

Painted in 1979, Salut Tom is one of Mitchell’s most expansive paintings, spanning over eight meters (316 inches) in width. Dedicated to the memory of her friend, art critic, and curator Thomas B. Hess, who had died the previous year, Salut Tom is an airy and bright homage to the late figure of Hess.

The painting is made up of four vertical panels, that together convey a sense of freshness and a light-drenched atmosphere. Rather than a somber elegy, Salut Tom is a celebration of life, full of movement, vitality, and depth. The title itself, which translates to “Hello, Tom” or “Cheers, Tom,” suggests an ongoing dialogue rather than an end, reinforcing the idea that memory and presence persist through art.

Like a landscape drenched in summer sunshine, the painting is dominated by bright yellow over areas of sky blue, moss and forest green, and white below. Going from left to right, the panels unfold like a panorama, from the predominantly yellow left panel, through shades of blue, green, and white moving right, especially along the bottom edge of the canvas. The last panel on the right presents a mix of colors, with deep greens and light blues, teal, and white dominating the scene.

Painted with oil on canvas, throughout the panels, thicker and thinner areas of paint and drips create a variety of textures on the surface. The colors seem to float and collide across the canvas with an organic dynamism. Like many of Mitchell’s works, Salut Tom is densely packed, creating an all-over composition that engulfs the viewer in an emotional storm of color and energy.

The painting is part of the Corcoran Collection, a gift of the Women’s Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and is part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, USA.

Style and Influence

Mitchell’s approach in Salut Tom exemplifies her distinctive use of color and brushwork. Unlike the rigid structure found in some forms of abstract art, her paintings maintained a sense of fluidity and emotion-driven gestures. The layers of paint seem to pulse with energy, evoking landscapes, emotions, and fleeting moments in time. While never overtly figurative, her compositions often suggest the natural world, turbulent skies, running waters, or dense foliage, while remaining entirely abstract. The emotional resonance of Salut Tom also reflects Mitchell’s ability to fuse personal experience with universal themes of memory, loss, and vitality.

Joan Mitchell’s Legacy

Joan Mitchell’s work has gained increasing recognition in recent years, with retrospectives held in prime institutions worldwide. Salut Tom was included in the 2016–2017 exhibition Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy of Art in London and in a retrospective exhibition on the artist’s work, held from 2021 to 2023 at SFMOMA in San Francisco, CA, the Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, MD, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, France.

While she was sometimes overshadowed by her male peers during her lifetime, her legacy is now firmly established as one of the most significant painters of the 20th century. As we celebrate the centennial of her birth, Salut Tom stands as a testament to Mitchell’s mastery of abstraction and her ability to channel profound feelings through paint. It is a work that demands engagement, rewarding viewers with its rich, layered textures and evocative use of color. More than a farewell, it is a declaration of enduring presence—an artistic salute that continues to resonate decades after its creation.