Sentences with phrase «1950s by abstraction»
In the arts, a similar revolution was taking place; the realism of the early Modern period had been supplanted in the late 1950s by Abstraction and Pop Art.
http://artist.christies.com/ Not exact matches
George McNeil was not among the most well known abstract expressionist painters, but he was in the thick of it in the 1940s and 1950s, showing his brash, bright, gushing abstractions alongside work by de Kooning and Pollock.
During the early 1950s, Richard Diebenkorn was known as an abstract expressionist, and his gestural abstractions were close to the New York School in sensibility but firmly based in the San Francisco abstract expressionist sensibility; a place where Clyfford Still has a considerable influence on younger artists by virtue of his teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute.
In the 1950's, Diebenkorn painted abstractions marked by strong compositions and gestural brushwork.
Traveled to Fondation Deutsch, Lausanne, Switzerland (September 17 — November 8); Musée Bab Rouah, Rabat, Morocco (December 11, 1992 — January 31, 1993; Casablanca, Morocco (February — March 1993); Fondation FISA, Séville, Spain (April — May 1993); Italy (summer 1993); Museum Sankt, Saint - Ingbert, Germany (September 19 — November 21, 1993); and Paris (December 1993 — January 1994) Painting, Self Evident: Evolutions in Abstraction, concurrently at Halsey Gallery, College of Charleston; The Meddin Building; and the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina (May 21 — June 28) Summer group exhibition, Ginny Williams Gallery, Denver (May 14 — June 30) From America's Studio: Twelve Contemporary Masters — Works by Alumni of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago / One Hundred Twenty - fifth Anniversary Celebration, Art Institute of Chicago (May 10 — June 14) 15th Anniversary Exhibition, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago (May 8 — June 13) Slow Art: Painting in New York Now, P.S. 1 Museum, Institute for Contemporary Art, Long Island City, New York (April 26 — June 21) Play Between Fear and Desire, Germans van Eck Gallery, New York (April 24 — May 23) Alumni Exhibition, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (April 20 — June 15) An Exhibition for Satyajit Ray, Philippe Briet Gallery, New York (April 11 — May 16) Paint, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York (April 4 — May 9) Paths to Discovery: The New York School — Works on Paper from the 1950s and 1960s, curated by Ellen Russotto, Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, City University of New York (March 20 — April 17) American Art 1930 — 1970 (organized by FIAT with the assistance of Independent Curators, New York), Lingotto Fiere, Turin, Italy (January 8 — March 21) A Permanent Collection: Art From the 19th Century to the Present, Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, New York
By the late 1950s, when Kinley painted Red, White and Black and other pared down palette - knifed abstractions of landscape with subliminal suggestions of the human figure, the Vienna - born, St. Martin's - trained painter had already enjoyed two solo exhibitions at Gimpel Fils, London.
Rothko to Richter: Mark - Making in Abstract Painting from the Collection of Preston H. Haskell spans the years 1950 to 1990, an era whose commitment to artistic experimentation is rivaled only by the first decades of the 20th century, when abstraction was invented.
This gorgeous survey «adds to the history of postwar abstraction by providing a first glimpse of what a small group of Cuban artists were up to in the 1950s and early»60s, the tumultuous years leading up to, and just after, the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power.»
Lyrical abstraction also represented a competition between the School of Paris and the new New York School of Abstract Expressionism painting represented above all since 1946 by Jackson Pollock, then Willem de Kooning or Mark Rothko, which were also promoted by the American authorities from the early 1950s.
Recent museum exhibitions: Extreme Drawing — Ballpoint Pen Drawing Since 1950, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, 2013; Special Installation in Representation / Abstraction in Korean Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010 - 11; New Vision — Ballpoint Pen Drawings by IL LEE, Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas, 2010; IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 2007; IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions, San Jose Museum of Art, CA, 2007.
Perhaps the most ironic, yet poignant evocation of AbEx postwar abstraction is Yellow Experiment, by Louis Ribak, dating from the later 1950s.
Artists Lorser Feitelson (Lorser Feitelson and the Invention of Hard Edge Painting, The Late Paintings, and The Kinetic Series: Works from 1916 - 1923), Karl Benjamin (Karl Benjamin: Paintings from 1950 — 1965, Drawings from 1950 — 1965, Dance the Line: Paintings by Karl Benjamin, and Karl Benjamin and the Evolution of Abstraction) and Helen Lundeberg (Helen Lundeberg and the Illusory Landscape, Infinite Distance — Architectural Compositions by Helen Lundeberg) have each been featured in extensive retrospective exhibitions.
Like most artists, Bearden could have been swept along by the abstraction of the 1950s, drawn as many were to the excitement at the heart of what helped New York emerge as an international art center.
«Kinetic Abstraction 1950s - 1960s» Installation View curated in collaboration with Erika Hoffman Photo by Jason Mandella
1981 Museum of Contemporary Art: «Twentieth Century NorthAmerican Painters» Sao Paulo, Brazil La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art: «Artists Quilts: Quilts by Ten Contemporary Artists with Ludy Strauss» California Also: Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, San Jose, California, and University Art Gallery, University of Texas, Arlington, Texas (catalogue) Art Center College of Design: «DECADE: Los Angeles Painting in the «70's» Pasadena, California Fox Graphics Gallery: «Selected Prints Published by Landfall Press» Boston Washington Project for the Arts: «Neon Fronts: Luminous Art for the Urban Landscape», Washington D.C. James Corcoran Gallery: «Summer Group Show» Los Angeles, California Thomas Babeor Gallery: «A California Summer» La Jolla, CA Tower Gallery, Inc.: «California Artists: Sculpture and Paintings» Southampton, New York Judith Christian Gallery: «Forty Famous Californians» New York Montgomery Art Gallery, Pomona College: «Professor's Choice» Claremont, California Sheldon Gallery, University of Nebraska: «The Kansas City Show» Lincoln, Nebraska Art Gallery, California State University, Northridge: «Abstraction in Los Angeles, 1950 - 1980: Selections from the Murray & Ruth Gribin Collection»
His conversion to abstraction (ca. 1950), strongly influenced by the American Constructivist theoretician Charles Biederman, put the cat among the pigeons in staid old England.
By the 1950s, abstraction had been embraced as the progressive mode, and Mr. Bloom never made completely abstract work.
After flourishing for some 20 years, by the 1950s the cerebral concerns of this art — its exploration of pure form and universal principles — were being eclipsed by the more expressive gestural abstraction coming out of the New York School and the School of Paris.
Works by the earlier generation of artists represented in the show can be loosely situated within geometric abstraction and abstract constructivism, influenced by artists such as Piet Mondrian (1872 — 1944) and groups such as De Stijl (founded 1917) and the ZERO movement of the 1950s and 60s, as well as the American Colour Field painters.
The selected works range from the pioneering geometric abstraction of Rafael Soriano, Mario Carreño and José Mijares executed in Cuba in the 1950s, the concrete art of Carmen Herrera and constructive experiments of Zilia Sánchez produced in the diaspora, to the hard - edge abstraction of Fernando García from the 1980s and the more recent multi-dimensional installations by Cuban - Americans María Martínez - Cañas, Leyden Rodríguez Casanova, and Vanessa Díaz, to name only a few.
In Calgary, despite pioneering work in a post-impressionist vein by Maxwell BATES, Illingworth KERR and W. L. Stevenson in the 1950s, abstraction never really caught on.
2014 Venus Drawn Out: 20th Century Drawings by Great Women Artists, The Armory Show Modern, New York, NY Beyond the Spectrum: Abstraction in African American Art, 1950 - 1975, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY RISING UP / UPRISING: Twentieth Century African American Art, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY The Harmon & Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art: Works on Paper, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era and Beyond, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue from the Collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and Camille O. and William H. Cosby Jr., Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC Prospect.3: Notes for Now, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
By the late 1950s, she found her voice in abstraction, patterning geometric shapes in rich colors against solid backgrounds.
During the 1950s and 60s, representation in painting was overshadowed by abstract expressionist and minimalist abstraction; during the following decade, conceptualist non-object forms dominated contemporary art.
Recent museum exhibitions: Extreme Drawing — Ballpoint Pen Drawing Since 1950, curated by Richard Klein, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2013; 11th National Drawing Invitational: New York, Singular Drawings, curated by Charlotta Kotik, Arkansas Arts Center, 2012; Representation / Abstraction in Korean Art, curated by Soyoung Lee, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010 - 11; New Vision — Ballpoint Pen Drawings by IL LEE, Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas, 2010; Il Lee, Vilcek Foundation, New York (2008); IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings, curated by Joanna Kleinberg, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 2007; IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions, curated by JoAnne Northrup, San Jose Museum of Art, CA, 2007.
Gradually departing from Realism, Thomas's brushwork loosened, and by the late 1950s, she found her voice in Abstraction, patterning geometric shapes in rich colors against solid backgrounds.
In the 1950s, the more robust abstraction of Mondrian was replaced by a quiet stillness, particularly evident in the work and writings of artists like Ad Reinhardt and Burgoyne Diller.
Chapter 1: Things Must be Pulverized: Abstract Expressionism Charts the move from figurative to abstract painting as the dominant style of painting (1940s & 50s) Key artists discussed: Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko Chapter 2: Wounded Painting: Informel in Europe and Beyond Meanwhile in Europe: abstract painters immediate responses to the horrors of World War II (1940s & 50s) Key artists discussed: Jean Dubuffet, Lucio Fontana, Viennese Aktionism, Wols Chapter 3: Post-War Figurative Painting Surveys those artists who defiantly continued to make figurative work as Abstraction was rising to dominance - including Social Realists (1940s & 50s) Key artists discussed: Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Alice Neel, Pablo Picasso Chapter 4: Against Gesture - Geometric Abstraction The development of a rational, universal language of art - the opposite of the highly emotional Informel or Abstract Expressionism (1950s and early 1960s) Key artists discussed: Lygia Clark, Ellsworth Kelly, Bridget Riley, Yves Klein Chapter 5: Post-Painting Part 1: After Pollock In the aftermath of Pollock's death: the early days of Pop, Minimalism and Conceptual painting in the USA (1950s and early 1960s) Key artists discussed: Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly Chapter 5: Anti Tradition - Pop Painitng How painting survives against growth of mass visual culture: photography and television - if you can't beat them, join them (1960s and 70s) Key artists discussed: Alex Katz, Roy Lichtenstein, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol Chapter 6: A transcendental high art: Neo Expressionism and its Discontents The continuation of figuration and expressionism in the 1970s and 80s, including many artists who have only been appreciated in later years (1970s & 80s) Key artists discussed: Georg Baselitz, Jean - Michel Basquiat, Anselm Kiefer, Julian Schnabel, Chapter 7: Post-Painting Part II: After Pop A new era in which figurative and abstract exist side by side rather than polar opposites plus painting expands beyond the canvas (late 1980s to 2000s) Key artists discussed: Tomma Abts, Mark Grotjahn, Chris Ofili, Christopher Wool Chapter 8: New Figures, Pop Romantics Post-cold war, artists use paint to create a new kind of «pop art» - primarily figurative - tackling cultural, social and political issues (1990s to now) Key artists discussed: John Currin, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Neo Rauch, Luc Tuymans
While Bearden's early work consisted of figural paintings inspired by the social realism that dominated the 1930s, a trip to Paris in 1950 inspired him to move closer to abstraction.
Select museum exhibitions: MMCA Collection Highlights: Untitled, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, 2015; Extreme Drawing — Ballpoint Pen Drawing Since 1950, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, 2013; 11th National Drawing Invitational: New York, Singular Drawings, Arkansas Arts Center, 2012; Representation / Abstraction in Korean Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010 - 11; New Vision — Ballpoint Pen Drawings by IL LEE, Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas, 2010; Il Lee, Vilcek Foundation, New York, 2008; IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 2007; IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions, San Jose Museum of Art, CA, 2007; Open House: Working in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2004.
Californian art from the 1950s through the 1970s is a particular strength, with artwork by Sam Francis, Richard Diebenkorn, Jay DeFeo, Ronald Davis, Larry Bell, Edward Ruscha, Kenneth Price, Charles Arnoldi, and Ed Moses, Color Field painting and Lyrical Abstraction are represented by Ronald Davis, Sam Francis, Kenneth Noland, Ronnie Landfield, Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler, and Kenneth Showell.
2008 Text / Messages: Books by Artists - Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN Inspired by Literature: Art and Fine Books - Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ PEGGY GUGGENHEIM E LA NUOVA PITTURA AMERICANA - Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice Collector's Eye - Gana Art Gallery, Seoul Blake to Kahlo to Warhol: Masterworks from the Harry Ransom Center - El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA), El Paso, TX 1945 - 1949 Repartir à zéro, comme si la peinture n'avait jamais existé - Musée des Beaux - Arts de Lyon, Lyon Action / Abstraction - Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO Contemporary Masters: Print Selections - Amy Simon Fine Art, Westport, CT REFLECTIONS ON LIGHT - 30 years Galerie Bernd - Galerie Klüser, Munich Tilted Balance - Collectors Contemporary, Singapore From Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art: Johns, Rauschenberg and the Aesthetic of Indifference — Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma Nuances of Printmaking - Koehnline Museum of Art, Des Plaines (IL) The sight of music - Mississippi Museum of Art MMA, Jackson, MS Abstraction: Summer 2008 - Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago, IL Philadelphia Collects: Works on Paper - Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts - DCCA, Wilmington, DE Ganz schön ART - ig - LECKERBISSEN III - Fischerplatz Galerie, Ulm Paper Trail II: Passing Through Clouds - The Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA Modern and Contemporary Prints - Osborne Samuel, London, United Kingdom Action / Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940 - 1976 - The Jewish Museum of New York, New York City, NY Blood on Paper - the Art of the Book - Victoria & Albert Museum - V&A, London, United Kingdom Die Hände der Kunst - MARTa Herford, Herford Side By Side Docents» Choice: Works On Paper - Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA Color as Field - American Painting, 1950 — 1975 - Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Far Ouby Artists - Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN Inspired by Literature: Art and Fine Books - Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ PEGGY GUGGENHEIM E LA NUOVA PITTURA AMERICANA - Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice Collector's Eye - Gana Art Gallery, Seoul Blake to Kahlo to Warhol: Masterworks from the Harry Ransom Center - El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA), El Paso, TX 1945 - 1949 Repartir à zéro, comme si la peinture n'avait jamais existé - Musée des Beaux - Arts de Lyon, Lyon Action / Abstraction - Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO Contemporary Masters: Print Selections - Amy Simon Fine Art, Westport, CT REFLECTIONS ON LIGHT - 30 years Galerie Bernd - Galerie Klüser, Munich Tilted Balance - Collectors Contemporary, Singapore From Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art: Johns, Rauschenberg and the Aesthetic of Indifference — Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma Nuances of Printmaking - Koehnline Museum of Art, Des Plaines (IL) The sight of music - Mississippi Museum of Art MMA, Jackson, MS Abstraction: Summer 2008 - Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago, IL Philadelphia Collects: Works on Paper - Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts - DCCA, Wilmington, DE Ganz schön ART - ig - LECKERBISSEN III - Fischerplatz Galerie, Ulm Paper Trail II: Passing Through Clouds - The Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA Modern and Contemporary Prints - Osborne Samuel, London, United Kingdom Action / Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940 - 1976 - The Jewish Museum of New York, New York City, NY Blood on Paper - the Art of the Book - Victoria & Albert Museum - V&A, London, United Kingdom Die Hände der Kunst - MARTa Herford, Herford Side By Side Docents» Choice: Works On Paper - Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA Color as Field - American Painting, 1950 — 1975 - Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Far Ouby Literature: Art and Fine Books - Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ PEGGY GUGGENHEIM E LA NUOVA PITTURA AMERICANA - Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice Collector's Eye - Gana Art Gallery, Seoul Blake to Kahlo to Warhol: Masterworks from the Harry Ransom Center - El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA), El Paso, TX 1945 - 1949 Repartir à zéro, comme si la peinture n'avait jamais existé - Musée des Beaux - Arts de Lyon, Lyon Action / Abstraction - Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO Contemporary Masters: Print Selections - Amy Simon Fine Art, Westport, CT REFLECTIONS ON LIGHT - 30 years Galerie Bernd - Galerie Klüser, Munich Tilted Balance - Collectors Contemporary, Singapore From Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art: Johns, Rauschenberg and the Aesthetic of Indifference — Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma Nuances of Printmaking - Koehnline Museum of Art, Des Plaines (IL) The sight of music - Mississippi Museum of Art MMA, Jackson, MS Abstraction: Summer 2008 - Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago, IL Philadelphia Collects: Works on Paper - Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts - DCCA, Wilmington, DE Ganz schön ART - ig - LECKERBISSEN III - Fischerplatz Galerie, Ulm Paper Trail II: Passing Through Clouds - The Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA Modern and Contemporary Prints - Osborne Samuel, London, United Kingdom Action / Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940 - 1976 - The Jewish Museum of New York, New York City, NY Blood on Paper - the Art of the Book - Victoria & Albert Museum - V&A, London, United Kingdom Die Hände der Kunst - MARTa Herford, Herford Side By Side Docents» Choice: Works On Paper - Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA Color as Field - American Painting, 1950 — 1975 - Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Far OuBy Side Docents» Choice: Works On Paper - Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA Color as Field - American Painting, 1950 — 1975 - Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Far Out!
Recent museum exhibitions: Extreme Drawing — Ballpoint Pen Drawing Since 1950, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 2013; 11th National Drawing Invitational: New York, Singular Drawings, Arkansas Arts Center, 2012; Representation / Abstraction in Korean Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010 - 11; New Vision — Ballpoint Pen Drawings by IL LEE, Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas, 2010; Il Lee, Vilcek Foundation, New York, 2008; IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 2007; IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions, San Jose Museum of Art, CA, 2007.
Together, «Bay Area Abstraction» and the related «pendant» exhibition of works from the 1950s and»60s by Madeleine Dimond, Edward Dugmore, Lynn Faus, Lilly Fenichel, James Kelly, Michael Kennedy, Robert McChesney, Deborah Remington, and Hassel Smith, painters who also studied at the CSFA, create a lineage of teachers and students across three generations.
Locus is Latin for «place» — «where it's happening,» in English — as in: «By the early 1950s, New York had emerged as the locus of Postwar abstraction.»
Painting in 1950, this 18 - by -24-inch Sapolin enamel on paper reflects the artist's decision in the late 1940s to eliminate «color from his palette in order to focus on line, form and imagery» resulting in «the birth of a confident and energetic synthesis of abstraction, biomorphic forms and gestural «action painting»... The black and white abstractions also demonstrate the crucial relationship between drawing and painting in de Kooning's oeuvre.
(New York — January 8, 2014) Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to present Beyond the Spectrum: Abstraction in African American Art, 1950 - 1975, an exhibition of over thirty paintings and sculptures by leading abstractionists including major works by Charles Alston, Frank Bowling, Ed Clark, Harold Cousins, Beauford Delaney, Melvin Edwards, Sam Gilliam, Richard Hunt, Norman Lewis, Al Loving, Howardena Pindell, Alma Thomas, Jack Whitten, William T. Williams, and Hale Woodruff.
The 6th, 7th and 8th graders played musical improvisations inspired by the exhibition on view on the view, Beyond the Spectrum: Abstraction in African American Art, 1950 - 1975 (January 11 - March 8, 2014).
Recent museum exhibitions include: First Hand: Architects, Artists, and Designers from the L.J. Cella Collection, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA, 2016; MMCA Collection Highlights: Untitled, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, 2015; Momentum: An Experiment in the Unexpected, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA, 2014; Extreme Drawing — Ballpoint Pen Drawing Since 1950, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, 2013; 11th National Drawing Invitational: New York, Singular Drawings, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR, 2012; Representation / Abstraction in Korean Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010 - 11; New Vision — Ballpoint Pen Drawings by IL LEE, Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas, 2010; Il Lee, Vilcek Foundation, New York, 2008; IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 2007; IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions, San Jose Museum of Art, CA, 2007; Open House: Working in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2004.
Raymond neatly sets up the «conflict» between abstraction and representationalism by juxtaposing 1950s and»60s abstractions by Robert Motherwell (collage), Lucio Fontana (slashed canvas, perforated paper) and Anthony Caro (sculpture), with a ribald drawing of a woman by Willem de Kooning, a crashed car re-created in fiberglass by Charles Ray, and Andro Wekua's wax sculpture of a spunky but mutilated child standing before a geometric canvas.
Regularly inspired by their modernist past, yet at the same time unburdened by it, each has also looked periodically to nature, not in opposition to abstraction, which was the charge presented against painting nature in the 1950s, but as a resource for enriching it.»
Robert Motherwell & The New York School: Storming the Citadel, by filmmaker Catherine Tatge, looks at the epic struggle undertaken by Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Kline, and Motherwell as they changed the trajectory of art in the 1940s and 1950s, inventing a new type of abstraction and, in the process, making New York the center of the art world.
The inevitably inconclusive and problematical relationship between shared American and British influences in Contemporary art (leading to Abstraction in the 1950s / 60s) is, perhaps, still unresolved — at least for those of us who are still enthralled by Patrick Heron's take on the relationship between the New York School and the St.Ives painters.
In the late 1950s / early 1960s, a purely abstract form of Colour Field painting appeared in works by Helen Frankenthaler and others, while in 1964, the famous art critic Clement Greenberg helped to introduce a further stylistic development known as «Post-Painterly Abstraction».
This exhibition explores the highly formulated and transitional status of geometrical abstraction in the work of women artists from three generations: beginning with (Neo) concrete works on paper from the 1950s by Lygia Pape, to Minimal and Color Field paintings from the 1960s by Rosemarie Castoro and Gina Pane, the 1960 - 80s Pop Art influenced pattern paintings by Barbro Östlihn, to post-Concretist installations, structural and systemic experiments and text pieces from the 1970s and 80s by Lydia Okumura, Lenora de Barros, Martha Araújo, Dóra Maurer and Samia Halaby, to the original contemporary formulations of this history by Paloma Bosquê.
What has not been mentioned is that the «Saul - into - Paul conversion theory», published by Elaine de Kooning in Art News in 1958, was not set in Willem de Kooning's studio and did not mention a «Bell - Opticon», unlike her account of 1962.13 Additionally, while the 1958 account's introduction dramatised Kline's breakthrough to abstraction as a «transformation of consciousness», or a «revelation» of Biblical proportions, invoking the example of «Saul of Tarsus outside the walls of Damascus when he saw a «great light»», the description of Kline's technical and conceptual breakthrough in this account nevertheless resembled previous accounts of Kline's development in its gradualness, uneventfulness and thoughtfulness.14 The breakthrough that Elaine de Kooning first recounted was a product of sustained technical experimentation and logical thought on Kline's part, rather than accident or epiphany: «Still involved, in 1950, with elements of representation, he began to whip out small brushes of figures, trains, horses, landscapes, buildings, using only black paint.
Painting in Italy 1910s - 1950s: Futurism, Abstraction, Concrete Art relays a complex historical account of the fraught relationship between art and politics in Italy during the interwar and postwar period, attesting to the bumps, curves, utopias and traumas experienced by an eclectic group of artists working to assert a new pictorial language by challenging the dominant tenets of their culture.
Photo by Micha Theiner; Jackson Pollock — Number 1 (Lavender Mist), 1950, detail via wikiart; Victor Vasarely — Biadan, 1959 via wikiart; Willem de Kooning — Abstraction, 1950, detail via wikiart
The hard - edge lines and shapes that had been a mainstay of avant - garde trends in abstraction from painters as different as Kazimir Malevich and Gerald Murphy in the teens and 1920s to Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella in the 1950s and 60s, were being used by painters in the 1980s to symbolize the allusive space inside a computer.
His paintings of the 1950s evolved through a series of stages, beginning with monochromatic abstractions, followed by larger richly colored murals and «open» paintings that feature large areas of whiteness.