Sam Gilliam - American Contemporary Art

Sam Gilliam (1933 – 2022) was an American color field painter and lyrical abstractionist artist. Gilliam was associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington, D.C.-area artists that developed a form of abstract art from color field painting in the 1950s and 1960s. His works have also been described as belonging to abstract expressionism and lyrical abstraction. He worked on stretched, draped and wrapped canvas, and added sculptural 3D elements. He was recognized as the first artist to introduce the idea of a draped, painted canvas hanging without stretcher bars around 1965. This was a major contribution to the Color Field School and has had a lasting impact on the contemporary art canon

"Sam Gilliam is one of the great innovators in postwar American painting. He emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid 1960s with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting.A series of formal breakthroughs would soon result in his canonical Drape paintings, which expanded upon the tenets of Abstract Expressionism in entirely new ways. Suspending stretcherless lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed. As an African-American artist in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, this was not merely an aesthetic proposition; it was a way of defining art’s role in a society undergoing dramatic change. Gilliam has subsequently pursued a pioneering course in which experimentation has been the only constant. Inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, his lyrical abstractions continue to take on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials."(pacegallery.com) 

 

 

Edward Clark - Abstract Painting - Color Field

 

 Edward Clark, also known as Ed Clark (1926 - 2019), is American abstract expressionist painter.
"Ed Clark is an American Color Field painter whose style was shaped by the years he spent in Paris in the early 1950s. As an African-American who had been raised in the segregated South, he found Paris tolerant, and the atmosphere encouraging. While there, he developed a sophisticated abstract style that was markedly influenced by the tachist painter Nicolas de Stael. His early work is remembered for his "push-broom technique," which encouraged his full physical involvement in painting. He is also noted for the monumental scale of his work, and the fact that he is one of the first painters to have used shaped canvases

 

Kikuo Saito - Lyrical Abstraction - Color Field

Kikuo Saito (1939 – 2016) was a Japanese-born American abstract painter with ties to the Color Field movement and Lyrical abstraction. A former assistant to Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Larry Poons, Saito's work infuses richly saturated colorscapes with delicately drawn lines. Saito was the creator of sui generis theatre and dance events, collaborating with innovative directors and choreographers Robert Wilson, Peter Brook, Jerome Robbins, and dancer and choreographer Eva Maier, to whom he was married for several decades. His productions combined wordless drama in the poetic frameworks of light, costumes, music, and dance, most of which he devised and directed himself.
The composition of many of Saito's paintings was significantly influenced by and in dialogue with the geography of his theatre productions. Saito's dualistic nature took material form in the interplay between the collaborative theatre and the private realm of the painting studio. Art critic Karen Wilkin wrote that "if we are attentive, we discover that characters from his stage pieces have been reincarnated as abstract configurations within his paintings, reborn as the records of animated gestures that retain the individuality of their sources."
A commonality in the entire body of Saito's work, both on stage or on canvas, focuses on written signs. Repeated investigations of alphabet in Saito's work, both real and made-up, legible and obscured, speak to moments in his personal history.As a young immigrant in a country whose language he did not speak, Saito wrote space for himself in the already-established Color Field tradition by constructing his own painterly lexicon. Opposing motifs of free gestural brushtrokes and elegant, ordered lettering allude again to his double practice as painter and architect of poetic performance. Abstraction in Saito's work points to a meditation on the instabilities and impermanence of language and the mutability of meaning. A space opens once departing from structuralist systems of transmuting signs, and Saito fills that space with vibrant color. Wikipedia

Color Field - Kikuo Saito

"Kikuo Saito (1939–2016) was a Japanese American abstract painter with ties to the Color Field tradition. Born in Tokoyo, he came to New York City in 1966, where he worked as an assistant for such eminent painters as Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Larry Poons. Saito's work infuses richly saturated colorscapes with delicately drawn lines. Saito was the creator of sui generis theatre and dance events, working under Ellen Stewart at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company and collaborating with innovative and influential directors and choreographers Robert Wilson, Peter Brook, Jerome Robbins and Eva Maier.Saito's paintings have been featured in numerous solo and group shows worldwide, and are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Aldrich Contemporary Museums, and numerous private and corporate collections. KinoSaito, a non-profit museum and art space in Verplanck, New York, will open in 2019, in honor of Saito's interdisciplinary practice and spirit."(kikuosaito.com)
"The composition of much of Saito's painted work was significantly influenced by and in dialogue with the geography of his theatre productions. A dualistic nature to Saito himself took material form in the interplay between the collaborative theatre and the personal, private realm of the painting studio. Art critic Karen Wilkin writes, if we are attentive, we discover that characters from his stage pieces have been reincarnated as abstract configurations within his paintings, reborn as the records of animated gestures that retain the individuality of their sources."
A commonality in the entire body of Saito's work, both on stage or on canvas, focuses on written signs. Repeated investigations of alphabet in Saito's work, both real and made-up, legible and obscured, speak to moments in his personal history.[4] As a young immigrant in a country whose language he did not speak, Saito wrote space for himself in the already-established Color Field tradition by constructing his own painterly lexicon. Opposing motifs of free gestural brushtrokes and elegant, ordered lettering allude again to his double practice as painter and architect of poetic performance. Abstraction in Saito's work points to a meditation on the instabilities and impermanence of language and the mutability of meaning. Departing from structuralist[disambiguation needed] systems of transmuting signs, a space opens that Saito fills with vibrant color."Wikipedia