Magazine

Mark Rothko: The Master of Color in Search of The Human Drama

A key protagonist of Abstract Expressionism and color field painting, Mark Rothko (1903 – 1970) was one of the most influential 20th-century painters whose works deeply spoke, and still do, to the...

Illuminating the Canvas: Anna Eva Bergman's Luminous Journey through Artistic Landscapes

Born in 1909 to Swedish and Norwegian parents, Anna Eva Bergman demonstrated an early knack for drawing. She later honed her talent at Oslo's School of Applied Arts and Vienna’s School of Applied ...

Simon Hantaï. Between Invisibility and the Persistence of Vision

Simon Hantaï is the painter of absence, invisibility, and withdrawal. The essence of his art can be captured in the empty spaces between one color and another, in his pictorial and conceptual inte...

Women in American Abstraction, 1930-1950

American abstract artists faced many hurdles throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Entering a discipline still dominated by realism and ruled by powerful art critics and institutions, abstract artists h...

Quilting Histories - The Quilts of Gee's Bend

Two exhibitions of Gee’s Bend quilts - currently postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic - highlight the distinctive vision of an isolated group of artists descended from African American slaves. The G...

The Nevelson Chapel, An Oasis of Silence

Rushing past the shops and office towers surrounding 54th and Lexington in Midtown Manhattan, it would easy not to notice you are in the presence of a meditative masterpiece of mid-century art. Th...

The Eternal Vanguard—6 Extraordinary Female Abstract Artists from Latin America

I often talk about the avant-garde in terms of its failures, meaning it is a topic I anchor in the past, full of bygone stories of experimental things artists once wrote, once made, or once tried....

The Movie-Like Story of Mark Rothko's Seagram Murals

I consider traveling to see art to be a metaphysical experience: a pilgrimage to secular sanctuaries. Some of my most memorable art passages have involved Mark Rothko. I fondly remember journeying...

Stripping Down the Canvas - Farewell to Ron Gorchov

During a 2017 interview with Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, the American painter Ron Gorchov (1930 - 2020) offered the following advice to young artists: “Be desperate and patient.” The seeming...

Otto Freundlich - A Revelation of Abstraction

The year was 1912. At age 34, the still relatively young Otto Freundlich, who had only recently committed himself to becoming an artist, had reason to celebrate. He had just sold a major new work ...

Pat Passlof - Six Decades of Important Art

Pat Passlof gave me one of the most significant gifts an artist can bestow upon an art viewer, besides the gift of pure sensorial pleasure: she convinced me to question my own taste. My first enco...

Abstraction is in the Physical - Jules Olitski

The career of the Ukrainian-American artist Jules Olitski (1922 – 2007) reminds us that art is not a fixed human endeavor, which has to be done the same way by every practitioner, like, say, flyin...

Art Beyond Mexican Muralism - Manuel Felguérez Barra

Mexican artist Manuel Felguérez Barra has died at age 91 - one of nearly half a million members of the human family whose lives have so far been taken by COVID-19. A legend, whose abstract paintin...

Eva LeWitt - Harmonizing Color, Matter, Space

For the past few years, Eva LeWitt has been delighting a growing fan base with her completely fresh, lively and luminous sculptures. The first encounter many viewers had with her work was in her s...

The Art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Monumental in Every Way

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were the kind of artists you could study your entire lifetime and never grow tired. Their life together was filled with love, art, and incredible planning: three insepara...

On Abstract Illusionism - Taking Reality Out Of Illusion

Thanks to the spread of COVID-19, the art field has entered a strange time of extreme flatness as every exhibition in the world is re-imagined in digital form. That makes this the perfect time to ...

Semiabstractions with a Soul - The Legacy of Zarina Hashmi

Indian-American artist Zarina Hashmi, who preferred to simply be called Zarina, has died at age 82. Zarina has been described as a semi-abstract artist, a label that suggests the liminal zone her ...

A New Book Celebrates Alice Trumbull Mason, Pioneer of American Abstraction

Alice Trumbull Mason was a rarity in the art field: a die hard practitioner motivated entirely by the desire to learn. Mason died in 1971, at age 67, leaving behind hundreds of paintings and print...

Farewell to Siri Berg

Swedish American abstract artist Siri Berg, a member of American Abstract Artists whose work is in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, among other institutions, has died in New Yor...

4 Documentaries and 1 Movie on Abstract Art and Artists You Can Watch Now

Are you desperate for fresh viewing options to make COVID-19 self-isolation more tolerable? Instead of putting sit-coms on auto-play or sitting in front of the news all night, why not watch some o...

When Romare Bearden Went Abstract

If, like a lot of people, you missed out on seeing Abstract Romare Bearden at DC Moore Gallery in New York this winter thanks to the appearance of COVID-19, fear not: an even larger exhibition, ti...

7 Books on Female Abstract Artists To Read While in Self-Isolation

In times like this I consider myself lucky. I obsessively acquire art books from exhibitions and estate sales, so even when cooped up inside for weeks, or months, I at least have plenty to read. M...

The Unpredictable, Nature-Inspired Abstractions of Vivian Suter

For the second time in her life, Guatemala-based artist Vivian Suter is becoming one of the most buzzed about abstract painters in the world. Following a breakout appearance in documenta 14, score...

How JMW Turner Influenced Abstract Art

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was considered one of the most famous painters in Europe when he died. Introspective and experimental, he pushed himself far beyond his contemporaries. Co...

The Content and Emotion in the Art of Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan (1922 – 2008) has not been treated well by the self-appointed writers of art history. Throughout her career she was misunderstood and mislabeled, excluded from the movement she love...

How Sonya Rapoport Used Abstraction to Pioneer Computer Art

Sonya Rapoport is having a moment. Or more accurately, since the Berkeley, California-based artist passed away in 2015, the immense artistic legacy she left behind is having a moment. Following ma...

How Piero Dorazio Brought Abstraction to Italy

Once again today we find ourselves in a time when the art field seems dominated by politically relevant art. As such, an age old question is again being debated: is abstract art inherently politic...

Light, Space and Abstraction in the Work of Santiago Calatrava

Twice I have had the pleasure of seeing the work of Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava in person. The first time was the Milwaukee Art Museum. The city of Milwaukee takes its name from a native ...

Agnes Pelton, The Unsung Visionary Painter of the Sublime

A two-year, traveling retrospective of the work of Agnes Pelton will soon open at the Whitney Museum of American Art, re-introducing contemporary New Yorkers to an esoteric abstract artist who onc...

One (More) Word About Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian”

In the name of abstract art I say, “Thank you, Maurizio Cattelan. And bravo!” An Italian artist known for making hyper-realistic artworks, Cattelan has received ample scorn of late from critics, j...

7 Times Abstract Art and Artists Were Featured on US Stamps

The United States has issued thousands of postage stamps over the course of its history. Hundreds have featured images of important artists and artworks, and a respectable number of those US stamp...

Remembering Emilio Vedova, a leader of Arte Informale

This winter in Milan, Italy, the Palazzo Reale will host an exhibition celebrating what would have been the 100th birthday of the Italian abstract painter Emilio Vedova, who died in 2006. Born in ...

Abstraction and Arte Povera Through The Spirit of Giuseppe Penone’s Lymph Matrix

Visitors to the Palais d’Iéna in Paris during the Foire Internationale d'Art Contemporain (FIAC) 2019 received a rare treat: the installation of Matrice di Linfa (Lymph Matrix), a 40-meter-long bi...

Steven Parrino, The Bad Boy of the 1980s Abstract Art

The artist Steven Parrino never made a living off of his art. He died in 2005, so you could be forgiven for thinking recent press reports that Parrino is “enjoying an art market renaissance” are a...

Pierre Soulages Celebrates His 100 Birthday at The Louvre

Born on Christmas Eve in Rodez, a small town in the South of France, the French abstract painter Pierre Soulages has turned out to be a very special gift to the world. Indeed, The Musée du Louvre ...

Remembering Palestinian Abstract Artist Kamal Boullata

Beloved Palestinian artist and writer Kamal Boullata is dead at age 77. Boullata passed away on 6 August 2019 in Berlin, where he was a resident fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Boull...

Legendary Kinetic and Op Artist Carlos Cruz-Diez Dies at 95

Carlos Cruz-Diez (b. 1923), an artist of the people, has died. An obituary posted on his official website reads, “It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of our beloved father, grandfat...

Robert De Niro Sr., Between European Modernism and Abstract Expressionism

You have likely heard the name Robert De Niro before—the two-time Academy Award winning actor has starred in 53 motion pictures. But you might not realize the connection De Niro has to some of the...

The Persistence of Form in The Art Of Jiro Yoshihara

This summer, Fergus McCaffrey gallery in Tokyo is reviving interest in the work of Gutai Group founder Jiro Yoshihara. Jiro Yoshihara: The Persistence of Form focuses on a specialized aspect of hi...

Farewell to Eberhard Havekost

On 6 June, the German Press Agency (dpa) reported the death of German painter Eberhard Havekost at age 52. His gallerist, Frank Lehmann, owner of Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, was quoted as saying he was...

The Story of Atomium, A Brussels Gem That Almost Wasn't

More than 60 years after it was built, the Atomium in Brussels has become one of the most beloved buildings in Europe. When it was first constructed, however, critics panned it as a disgrace. A st...

Meet an Italian Spatialist Who is Not Lucio Fontana

Next month in London, a survey of more than 40 works will trace the entire career of Italian artist Paolo Scheggi (1940 – 1971). Paolo Scheggi: In Depth at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italia...

How Henry Moore Portrayed Nuclear Energy Through Sculpture

As you stroll along South Ellis Avenue on the bucolic campus of the University of Chicago, you come upon an unusual abstract form protruding from a cement plaza next to The Joe and Rika Mansueto L...

Revisiting the Sculpture of Tony Smith through These 5 Works

Tony Smith enjoys a radically individualized status within the story of 20th Century art. His sculpture oeuvre defies easy categorization, occupying a place somewhere between architecture, science...

Abstraction as Continuous Adventure - The Art of Frank Wimberley

More than a century ago, Wassily Kandinsky asked whether purely abstract art could ever achieve the same emotional effect as music. Since the 1950s, Frank Wimberley has been proving that it can, b...

Tony DeLap, A Multifaceted Abstract Artist, Dies at 91

Abstract artist Tony DeLap has died at age 91. It was barely more than a year ago that a DeLap retrospective opened at the Laguna Art Museum, in Laguna Beach, California. The exhibition featured n...

Why Was Richard Serra's Tilted Arc So Controversial?

The story of “Tilted Arc,” a 36.5 meter long, 3.6 meter tall steel sculpture by Richard Serra that was commissioned, installed, and then destroyed by government officials in New York in the 1980s,...

In Memory of Thomas Nozkowski

Abstract painter Thomas Nozkowski died last week at age 75. Pace Gallery, which represented Nozkowski, announced his passing. Nozkowski had been a fixture of the New York art field for more than f...