Color field facts for kids
Color field painting is a style of abstract painting that started in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by modernism from Europe. It's also connected to abstract expressionism, and many early Color Field artists were also important Abstract Expressionists.
Color field painting is known for using large areas of flat, solid color. These colors are often spread across or soaked into the canvas, creating smooth, unbroken surfaces. This style focuses less on brushstrokes or action. Instead, it emphasizes the overall look and feel of the colors. In Color Field painting, color itself becomes the main subject of the artwork.
During the late 1950s and 1960s, Color Field painters appeared in places like the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the United States. They used patterns like stripes, circles, and simple geometric shapes. They also sometimes hinted at landscapes or nature in their art.
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How it Started
After World War II, the art world's attention moved from Paris to New York. This led to the growth of American abstract expressionism. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, art critic Clement Greenberg noticed two different styles within abstract expressionism. He saw some artists focusing on "action painting" (like Jackson Pollock). But he also saw others using large areas of color, which he called "color field."
Key Artists and Their Contributions
Mark Rothko was one of the artists Greenberg called a Color Field painter. Rothko used color as a tool to express feelings. His famous "multiforms" paintings show large blocks of color. By the late 1950s, his colors became darker, moving from bright reds to deep blues and blacks.
Clyfford Still also influenced Color Field painting. His abstract paintings use different colors and textures placed next to each other. His art often looks like one layer of color has been "torn" away, showing colors underneath.
Robert Motherwell created art that combined abstract expressionism and Color Field painting. His "Open Series" paintings, from the late 1960s onwards, are good examples of classic Color Field art. Motherwell admired Henri Matisse, and you can see Matisse's influence in his use of color.
Barnett Newman is another important Color Field painter. His mature works feature large areas of pure, flat color separated by thin vertical lines he called "zips." These zips divide and connect the painting's parts. Even though his paintings look abstract, their titles often hinted at deeper meanings, sometimes with Jewish themes.
Artists like Jackson Pollock, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Ad Reinhardt, and Arshile Gorky (in his later works) were also connected to Color Field painting.
Pollock is famous for his "drip" paintings, where he poured paint onto the canvas. Critics like Clement Greenberg saw a connection between Pollock's all-over canvases and the large "Water Lilies" paintings by Claude Monet. Pollock's way of covering the whole canvas influenced Color Field painters like Newman, Rothko, and Still. Pollock also experimented with staining thin paint into raw canvas.
Arshile Gorky was one of the first artists to use the "staining" technique. He created wide fields of bright, open color as backgrounds for his organic shapes and lines. James Brooks also used staining in his paintings from the late 1940s. He thinned his oil paints to pour and drip them onto raw canvas.
Helen Frankenthaler was a key figure in the Color Field movement. After seeing Pollock's stained paintings, she started making her own "stain paintings" in 1952. Her famous painting Mountains and Sea is a great example. She helped start the Color Field movement in the late 1950s.
Hans Hofmann was an important artist and teacher. He brought ideas from Modernism to the United States. Hofmann was one of the first to develop theories about Color Field painting. His ideas influenced artists and critics, especially Clement Greenberg.
In 1953, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland were greatly influenced by Frankenthaler's stain paintings. They visited her studio and then went back to Washington, D.C., where they created major works that helped define the Color Field movement.
Morris Louis's paintings, like Where (1960), were a big step forward. His main works include series like the Unfurleds, Veils, and Stripes. Louis and Kenneth Noland were central to the development of Color Field painting, sometimes called the Washington Color School. They simplified what a finished painting should look like.
Noland, also from Washington, D.C., was another pioneer. He used series like Targets, Chevrons, and Stripes in his paintings. He studied art at Black Mountain College and learned about color from Josef Albers.
The Color Field Movement
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, young artists began to move away from abstract expressionism. They tried new ways of making art and handling paint and color. Several new abstract painting styles appeared, including the Washington Color School, hard-edge painting, geometric abstraction, minimalism, and Color Field.
Gene Davis was known for his paintings of vertical stripes of color, like Black Grey Beat (1964). He was also part of the Washington Color School.
Artists in the Color Field movement in the 1960s moved away from strong emotions and visible brushstrokes. They preferred clear surfaces and a sense of the whole picture (gestalt). Artists like Anne Truitt, Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Bush, Helen Frankenthaler, and Frank Stella were part of this movement. They moved away from the intense feeling of action painting towards a calmer "language" of color.
Art critic Clement Greenberg preferred the term post-painterly abstraction for Color Field painting. In 1964, he organized an important exhibition that helped define Color Field painting as a new direction in American art.
Jack Bush was a Canadian painter who became closely linked to Color Field painting. His painting Big A is an example of his Color Field work from the late 1960s.
Frank Stella was important in the rise of minimalism and Color Field painting. His "shaped canvases" of the 1960s, like Harran II (1967), changed abstract painting. Stella's early "Black Pin Stripe paintings" from 1959 were surprising because they were simple, flat, and repetitive.
In the late 1960s, Richard Diebenkorn started his Ocean Park series. These paintings are important examples of Color Field painting. They connect his earlier abstract expressionist works with Color Field. Diebenkorn was influenced by Henri Matisse and Joan Miró.
By the late 1960s, artists like Larry Poons, John Hoyland, Larry Zox, and Ronnie Landfield started a new movement called lyrical abstraction. This style combined Color Field painting with a focus on surface texture, deep space, and painterly touches.
What Color Field Painting Is About
Color Field painting is connected to post-painterly abstraction, abstract expressionism, hard-edge painting, and lyrical abstraction. It first described a specific type of abstract expressionism, especially the work of Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Barnett Newman. Clement Greenberg saw Color Field painting as related to, but different from, "action painting."
A key difference was how paint was handled. Color Field painters changed how paint could be applied. They wanted to remove anything extra from art. Artists like Newman, Rothko, and Still often used very simple forms. They focused on basic shapes, hints of nature, and a strong, emotional use of color. They generally removed recognizable images, aiming for pure abstraction. They wanted each painting to be a single, unified image, often as part of a series.
Unlike the strong, emotional brushstrokes of artists like Jackson Pollock, Color Field painting first seemed calm and simple. Color Field painters tried to hide individual brushstrokes. They used large, flat areas of color, often stained or soaked into the canvas. This emphasized the pure nature of visual abstraction and the shape of the canvas itself. However, Color Field painting can still be very expressive, just in a different way than action painting.
Stain Painting
Joan Miró was one of the first successful stain painters. The technique of staining was a big reason for the success of the Color Field movement. Artists would mix and thin their paint to make a liquid. Then, they would pour it onto raw, unprimed canvas, usually cotton. The paint would spread into the fabric of the canvas. Artists often drew shapes and areas as they stained. Many artists, including James Brooks, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis, used staining. The use of acrylic paint made staining even more popular in the 1960s. Acrylics were safer for the canvas than oil paints.
Helen Frankenthaler said about her staining technique:
When I first started doing the stain paintings, I left large areas of canvas unpainted... the canvas itself acted as forcefully and as positively as paint or line or color.
Spray Painting
Some artists used spray guns to create large areas of color on their canvases in the 1960s and 1970s. Jules Olitski was a pioneer in this. He sprayed layer after layer of different colors, slowly changing the shades. Dan Christensen also used spraying to create loops and ribbons of bright color.
Stripes
Stripes were a popular way for Color Field painters to use color. Barnett Newman, Morris Louis, Jack Bush, Gene Davis, and Kenneth Noland all made important series of stripe paintings. Newman called his stripes "zips," and they were usually vertical. Simpson and Noland's stripes were mostly horizontal. Gene Davis painted vertical stripes, and Morris Louis's vertical stripes were sometimes called "Pillars."
Magna Paint
Magna paint is a special type of acrylic paint developed in 1947, and improved in 1960, for artists like Morris Louis. Unlike modern water-based acrylics, Magna uses alcohol-based solvents. It can be mixed with turpentine and dries quickly. Magna colors are very bright and strong. Morris Louis used Magna a lot in his Stripe Series, pouring the undiluted colors directly from the can.
Acrylic Paint
In 1972, Henry Geldzahler, a curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said that Color Field painting became popular at the same time that acrylic paint was invented. He noted that oil paint leaves a slight oily edge, but acrylic paint stops cleanly at its own edge. This made acrylics perfect for Color Field painting.
Acrylic paints were first sold commercially in the 1950s. Water-based acrylics became available in the early 1960s. These water-soluble acrylics were perfect for stain painting. They allowed diluted colors to soak into raw canvas and stay there. Many Color Field painters, including Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, and Sam Francis, successfully used water-based acrylics for their new stain paintings.
Legacy and Influences
The use of large, open areas of expressive color, along with loose drawing, can be seen in the early 20th-century works of Henri Matisse and Joan Miró. These artists, along with Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Piet Mondrian, directly influenced the abstract expressionists, Color Field painters, and lyrical abstractionists.
Matisse's paintings French Window at Collioure and View of Notre-Dame, both from 1914, greatly influenced American Color Field painters, especially Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park paintings. Art historian Jane Livingston said that Diebenkorn saw these Matisse paintings in 1966, and they had a huge impact on his work.
Miró was a very influential artist. He was a pioneer of the staining technique, creating blurry, colorful backgrounds in the 1920s and 1930s. On top of these, he added his unique shapes and lines. In the 1960s, Miró painted large, bright fields of color that looked similar to the Color Field paintings of younger artists.
The Color Field movement spans several decades, from the mid-20th century to the early 21st century. It includes three related groups of painters: abstract expressionism, post-painterly abstraction, and lyrical abstraction. Some artists worked in all three styles. Pioneers like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman are mainly seen as abstract expressionists. Artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Kenneth Noland started as abstract expressionists but moved to post-painterly abstraction. Younger artists like Frank Stella and Larry Poons began with post-painterly abstraction and later moved towards lyrical abstraction.
Painters
The following is a list of Color Field painters and some of their important influences:
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Images for kids
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Ronnie Landfield, Rite of Spring, 1985. His work bridges Color Field painting with lyrical abstraction.
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East.jpg
John Seery, East, 1973. From Color Field to lyrical abstraction.
See also
- Abstract art
- Abstract Imagists
- Concrete art
- Hard-edge painting
- Lyrical abstraction
- Modern art
- Post-painterly abstraction
- Warming stripes (a way to show data using colors)
- Washington Color School
- Western painting
