Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975

About the Show:

Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975 celebrates the abstract art movement first called Post-Painterly Abstraction and now known as Color Field Painting. American painter Helen Frankenthaler (b. 1928) is credited with pioneering this new technique, in which color gained primacy and became both composition and subject matter. The exhibition covers her influences, the artists she subsequently influenced and, not coincidentally, the rise of acrylic paint--a thin, clear pigment that lends itself splendidly to creating large, pure blocks of color.

Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975 was organized by the American Federation of Arts. It was on view at the Denver Art Museum (November 9, 2007–February 3, 2008), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (February 29–May 26, 2008) and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee (June 20–September 21, 2008).