Post-Painterly
Abstraction
Post-painterly abstraction, the phrase was
first used by the critic Clement Greenberg in 1964 to distinguish the
abstract painting of the 1960s from works associated with the
abstract expressionist movement of the 1950s (see abstract expressionism). The production of the
abstract expressionists involved a strong personal emotionalism, a
painterly quality, and occasionally, as in the works of e.g. Willem de Kooning, elements of cubism.
The artists working in the various styles of post-painterly
abstraction moved toward a more impersonal and austerely
intellectual aesthetic. In their works they dealt with what they
considered to be the fundamental formal elements of abstract
painting: pure, unmodulated areas of color; flat, two-dimensional
space; monumental scale; and the varying shape of the canvas
itself.
These artists rejected the painterly and spontaneous
style of their predecessors and instead they often
stained the canvas with pigment to avoid any trace of
brushstrokes.
Among the specific trends encompassed by the term 'post-painterly
abstraction' are
minimalism and color-field painting. Painters associated with the movement
include Ellsworth Kelly, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Frank
Stella, and Morris Louis.
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Representative
painters:
Bush, Frankenthaler,
Kelly, Louis,
K.
Noland, Stella,
Olitski,