About Color Field Painting
Small´s Paradise, 1964, Smithsonian American Art Museum')> Cadmium Orange of Dr. Frankenstein, 1962, Smithsonian American Art Museum')> Color Line, 1961, Magna on canvas. Gift of the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, 1966')> Point of Tranquility, (1959-1960), Magna on canvas., Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966')>

Color Field painting, an abstract style that emerged in the 1950s following Abstract Expressionism, is characterized by canvases painted primarily with stripes, washes and fields of solid color. The first serious and critically acclaimed art movement to originate in the nation's capital, Washington Color School was central to the larger Color Field movement. As a reaction to the emotional energy and gestural surface of Abstract Expressionists, the Color Field artists and members of The Washington Color School turned away from the individual mark in favor of color itself becoming the content of the work. Breaking painting down to the fundamental formal elements, the Color Field artists created pure simplified, large-format, color-dominated fields on a large monumental scale.

During the early sixties, Color Field painting was the term used to describe younger artists whose work were related to second generation abstract expressionism yet clearly pointed toward a new direction in American painting. Artists such as Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Leon Berkowitz, Frank Stella and others eliminated recognizable imagery from their canvas and presented abstraction as an end in itself with each painting as one unified, cohesive, monolithic image.