Intentionally Exposed Canvas

About

Some painters leave parts of the canvas or linen bare, unpainted and often unprimed, letting its weave count as colour, light or space. Traditionally, size and ground hid the fabric completely, so exposing it makes the support part of the picture.

Paul Cézanne left scattered patches of bare canvas in late landscapes, letting them act as air and light. After 1950 the approach became a method. Helen Frankenthaler poured thinned paint onto raw canvas laid on the floor for Mountains and Sea (1952), and Morris Louis flanked vast empty centres with diagonal streams of colour in his Unfurleds (1960–61). In Italy, Salvatore Emblema pulled threads out of jute to make it translucent. Among contemporary painters, Caragh Thuring sets motifs against large areas of raw linen. Look for the stained halo where paint has bled into untreated fibres, and for how the bare ground holds the composition together.