NANCY MITCHNICK: UNCALIBRATED
Born in Detroit in 1947, Nancy Mitchnick began to paint in earnest around age twenty. She quickly became enmeshed in the artistic milieu building around her, though as a woman in a movement that was very focused on masculinity, and as a figurative painter in a moment where abstraction ruled the day, she was always something of a divergent figure. Despite this seeming clash, the intensity of Detroit’s Cass Corridor scene—a neighborhood that in the 1960s and 70s was home to a vigorous group of young artists—was a perfect match for her extraordinary drive to paint.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
NANCY MITCHNICK: UNCALIBRATED
MAY 6 – JULY 31, 2016
Born in Detroit in 1947, Nancy Mitchnick began to paint in earnest around age twenty. She quickly became enmeshed in the artistic milieu building around her, though as a woman in a movement that was very focused on masculinity, and as a figurative painter in a moment where abstraction ruled the day, she was always something of a divergent figure. Despite this seeming clash, the intensity of Detroit’s Cass Corridor scene—a neighborhood that in the 1960s and 70s was home to a vigorous group of young artists—was a perfect match for her extraordinary drive to paint.
Mitchnick was still living in Massachusetts when she began revisiting the landscapes of Detroit; today she has returned physically as well, and is working out of a studio in the Russell Industrial Center. Her paintings reflect the city, with its idiosyncratically doleful emptiness and bucolic appeal. The images are strong, bright, unabashed, and full-frontal, and are among the strongest works of Mitchnick’s career.
Mitchnick left Detroit for New York in 1973. Eventually she came to work as a Professor at Bard, CalArts, and Harvard, taking her from coast to coast and back again over the following decades. With each new environment her subjects evolved. In Detroit she had painted the visages of her artist friends. In New York she discovered her skills as a landscape painter. When she moved to New England to teach at Harvard, she painted the muddy landscapes of Ipswich.
Nancy Mitchnick: Uncalibrated is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and curated by Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at Large Jens Hoffmann Exhibition support for Nancy Mitchnick: Uncalibrated is generously provided by Ethan and Gretchen Davidson, David and Elyse Foltyn, Marsha Miro, and the Taubman Foundation.
