Urban Animals - Art Gallery of Alberta

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The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition Program The History of Abstraction: A Survey con’t Post-painterly Abstraction Morris Louis Where, 1960 Magna on canvas Hirshhorn Museum Post-painterly abstraction is a term created by art critic Clement Greenberg as the title for an exhibit he curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964. It is a broad term that encompasses a variety of styles which evolved in reaction to the painterly, gestural approaches of Abstract Expressionism. Greenberg characterized post-painterly abstraction as linear in design, bright in colour, lacking in detail and incident, and open in composition (inclined to lead the eye beyond the limits of the canvas). While post-painterly works were cleaner in composition and utilised sharper forms in reaction to Abstract Expressionist works, others utilised softer forms and a decorative character. The works of art termed post-painterly ushered in a variety of new directions in abstract art and these, combined with the Pop Art movement, led the way to the contemporary art of the 21st century. Jack Bush Big A, 1968 AFA Travelling Exhibition Program, Edmonton, AB. Ph: 780.428.3830 Fax: 780.421.0479 youraga.ca
The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition Program The History of Abstraction: A Survey con’t Colour Field Painting Abstraction in the visual arts has taken many forms over the 20th century. One of these is Colour Field Painting. Colour Field painting emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. Inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, colour field painting is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid colour spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favour of an overall consistency of form and process. Henri Matisse View of Notre Dame, 1914 Oil on canvas Museum of Modern Art, New York The use of large opened fields of expressive colour applied in generous painterly portions, accompanied by loose drawing, was first seen in the early 20th century works of Henri Matisse and Joan Miró. These artists, along with Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian directly influenced the Abstract Expressionists, the Colour Field painters and the Lyrical Abstractionists. During the late 1950s and 1960s Colour Field painters emerged in Great Britain, Canada, Washington, D.C. and the West Coast of the United States. Using formats of stripes, targets, simple geometric patterns and references to landscape imagery and to nature these artists began to break away stylistically from abstract expressionism; experimenting with new ways of making pictures and new ways of handling paint and colour. The artists associated with the Colour Field movement moved away from the violence and anxiety of Action Painting toward a new and ‘calmer’ language of colour. An important distinction that made colour field painting different from abstract expressionism was the paint handling. Colour Field painters revolutionized the way paint could be effectively applied as they sought to rid art of superfluous rhetoric. In this aim they used greatly reduced formats with drawing essentially simplified to repetitive and regulated systems, basic references to nature, and a highly articulated and psychological use of colour. In general these painters eliminated overt recognizable imagery and sought to present each painting as one unified, cohesive, monolithic image often with series of related types. Unlike the emotional energy and gestural surface marks and paint handling of abstract expressionists, colour field painters sought to efface individual marks in favour of large, flat, stained and soaked areas of colour. AFA Travelling Exhibition Program, Edmonton, AB. Ph: 780.428.3830 Fax: 780.421.0479 youraga.ca
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Urban Animals - Art Gallery of Alberta

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