Iva
- Artist: Joan Mitchell
- Date: 1973
- Medium: Oil paint on 3 canvases
- Dimensions: displayed: 2800 × 6000 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the "Iva" by Joan Mitchell. Painted in 1973, it's a striking triptych of oil on canvas, stretching more than 2.8 metres tall and 6 metres wide. The title comes from Mitchell’s beloved black‑and‑tan German Shepherd, a companion she said was “a total extension of me.” In a 1974 interview she playfully admitted she couldn’t tell who was extending whom. The dog was given to the artist by Marguerite Maeght, a prominent French art dealer who, with her husband Aimé, founded the Fondation Aimé and Marguerite Maeght. The work arrived in 2024 on long‑term loan from the Tate Americas Foundation. Here it sits in the “In the Studio” exhibition, a space that lets us feel the scale and immediacy of Mitchell’s gestural brushwork.
See it in person
Iva is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
