Thanks to Instagram and the hashtag #capdail, Menlo Park artist Mitchell Johnson is the subject of a museum retrospective at Musée Villa les Camélias, in Cap d’Ail, France, through September 29, 2024.
The museum’s director, Hélène Bonafous (pictured with Mitchell), discovered his work on Instagram through his use of the hashtag and followed him for several years before the two met in-person in 2023 and began organizing this large exhibition. This is Mitchell’s first exhibit in France and there are a number of landscapes of Cap d’Ail, Marseille and Meyreuil, the village near Aix-en-Provence where he lived several times 35 years ago. The show also includes more recent paintings from California, New England, New York, Italy and Scandinavia.
Musée Villa les Camélias is a belle-epoque mansion minutes from the border of Monaco. It houses an extensive permanent collection of the Basque painter, Ramiro Arrue, who was part of Picasso’s circle and The School of Paris. Hélène Bonafous was intrigued to discover MItchell’s paintings of France, but of equal interest was the dialogue with Arrue’s work, the shared connection to Post-Modernism apparent in his contemporary paintings of New England and Europe.
Mitchell has made annual painting trips to Europe since 1989. This retrospective offers a chance to consider the importance of his first stay in Europe, four months of independent study in Gotland, Sweden and the small village, Meyreuil, while he was a graduate student at Parsons School of Design New York. The new colors and patterns he found in Europe and especially Meyreuil, are the reason for the title, La révélation de Meyreuil. The exhibit is on view for five months, and the Cote D’Azur has embraced Johnson’s first show in France, with a TV interview on BFM in Nice, another for Monaco Info and numerous newspaper articles in La Gazette de Monaco.
