Joan Mitchell’s Sunflowers sold for $27.9 million at Sotheby’s Contemporary evening auction in New York last night. The Chicago native is associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement, even though she lived in France for much of her career. The striking visual dynamism of the dense composition reveals the artist’s affinity for the American action painters, amongst whom she lived and worked in the initial decade of her career; as one of the few women to garner significant critical acclaim within the predominantly male Eighth Street Club, Mitchell is remembered by art history as the leading female voice of the Abstract Expressionist movement.