“Mitchell Johnson is an artist who paints realist paintings that are basically abstract paintings and abstract paintings that are figurative.”
—Peter Selz, 2009
“In a late interview, Josef Albers claimed, “the content of art is visual formulation of our relation to life.” It’s difficult for me to think of another contemporary painter whose work compliments and proves this claim as powerfully as Mitchell Johnson’s does. In his paintings of the last fifteen years he has dedicated himself to visual formulation, basing his paintings on the fundamental challenges and surprises of composition. But there’s not a single gram of the cold formalist in Mitchell. Those rigorous experiments in visual formulation always serve our relation to life.”
—Peter Campion, 2021
Mitchell Johnson, an American Academy in Rome Visiting Artist (2015) and a Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Artist in Residence (2007), is the subject of the best selling monograph, Color as Content (2014). Johnson’s color- and shape-driven paintings are known for their unique approach to color and have been exhibited in Milan, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Johnson divides his time between his favorite painting locations in Europe, New England, New York City, Asia, Newfoundland and California. His paintings are in the collections of 28 museums and over 700 private collections. Johnson moved to the Bay Area in 1990 after finishing his MFA at Parsons in New York where he studied with many former students of Hans Hofmann: Paul Resika, Larry Rivers, Nell Blaine, Wolf Kahn, Leland Bell, Robert DeNiro, Sr and Jane Freilicher.
A new Mitchell Johnson monograph, Where The Colors Are, will be published in June, 2021.
Open by Appointment / Request a digital catalog by emailing: mitchell.catalog@gmail.com.
Follow on instagram: @mitchell_johnson_artist.