Draws from a new museum collection to trace seventy years of abstract
painting in the United States.
From the color field paintings of Helen Frankenthaler to the
plate-paintings of Julian Schnabel, this catalog showcases an
outstanding variety of postwar art in the United States. Featuring
pieces from the Museum Reinhard Ernst in Wiesbaden, a new institution
devoted to abstract art, the book charts the evolution of postwar
abstraction, offering insight into influential figures as well as groups
like the New York School and the Washington Color School. More than one
hundred color illustrations reproduce work by forty-five influential
artists, including Josef Albers, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, Willem de
Kooning, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella,
and Andy Warhol. Together, their works demonstrate the variety of
aesthetics and approaches within abstraction--improvisational forms
confront rigorous geometric compositions, pictures enter into dialogue
with sculptural objects, and paint and color conjure the sublime.