CategoriesStyles and Movements
Color Field Painting
Abstract painting from the late 1940s onward in which broad expanses of flat or stained colour carry the whole picture.
2 works · 10 related artists
About
Color Field Painting grew from the quieter side of Abstract Expressionism. By around 1950 Mark Rothko was stacking soft-edged rectangles that seem to hover and glow, Barnett Newman was dividing vast single-colour grounds with thin vertical bands he called zips, as in Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950–51), and Clyfford Still was spreading jagged fields of dark paint across huge canvases. The aim was a direct, physical encounter with colour.
A second wave changed the technique. After seeing Helen Frankenthaler's stained canvases in 1953, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland in Washington began thinning acrylic paint and letting it soak into unprimed cotton duck, fusing colour and canvas. Louis poured translucent veils and rivulets; Noland painted targets and chevrons; Jules Olitski sprayed misty fields; Gene Davis and Alma Thomas worked in stripes and rhythmic dabs. Look for large scale, thin paint, hard or feathered edges and no focal point.