color-field painting

color-field painting abstract art movement that originated in the 1960s. Coming after the abstract expressionism of the 1950s, color-field painting represents a sharp change from the earlier movement. The production of the abstract expressionists involved a strong personal emotionalism, a painterly quality, and occasionally, as in the works of Willem de Kooning , elements of cubism . Color-field artists 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. Painters associated with the movement include Ellsworth Kelly , Jules Olitski , Kenneth Noland , Frank Stella , and Morris Louis .

Colour Field Painting. A type of abstract painting in which the whole picture consists of large expanses of more or less unmodulated colour, with no strong contrasts of tone or obvious focus of attention. Sometimes Colour Field Paintings use only one colour; others use several that are similar in tone and intensity. This type of painting developed in the USA in the late 1940s and early 1950s, leading pioneers including Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. It is thus an aspect of Abstract Expressionism (developing the Field Painting of Jackson Pollock), and it has also been seen as a type—or precursor—of Minimal art. Many of the leading American abstract painters of the 1950s and 1960s were exponents of Colour Field Painting, among them Ellsworth Kelly and Jules Olitski. From 1952 Helen Frankenthaler developed Colour Field Painting by soaking or staining diluted paint into unprimed canvas, so that the paint is integral with the surface rather than superimposed on it. The term Colour Stain Painting is applied to works of this type. Frankenthaler's work was influential on many artists, including the Washington Color Painters.