Magazine

Bernard Frize, Without Remorse at Centre Pompidou

Bernard Frize has returned to Paris this summer for his first major exhibitions there in 15 years. Bernard Frize—Without Remorse is on view until 26 August at the Centre Pompidou, and Bernard Friz...

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...

Black Abstract Artists from the Thelma and Bert Ollie Memorial Collection Come to Saint Louis

This autumn, the Saint Louis Art Museum will expand the contemporary understanding of abstract art with an exhibition highlighting the contributions of Black abstract artists. The Shape of Abstrac...

Get Hypnotized by Bridget Riley at the National Galleries of Scotland

When the Edinburgh Art Festival opens in July, it will premier multiple groundbreaking surveys, including the first ever British collage survey, which traces the method back 400 years through more...

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...

How Queer Artists Used Abstraction to Express Themselves

A number of exhibitions are currently on view in consideration of Pride Month, as well as the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots—protests following a police raid of a gay bar in Greenwich Vil...

The Delicate Beauty of Constantin Brâncuși's Bird in Space

Constantin Brâncuși is considered the most influential sculptor of the 20th Century, and his most influential sculpture is considered to be the elegant “Bird in Space” (1923 – 1940), of which sixt...

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...

What Do Ranjani Shettar and Wassily Kandinsky Have in Common?

Late in 2018, Shearsman Books in Bristol, England, published the first ever color edition of Klänge (Sounds), the only book of prose poetry that Wassily Kandinsky ever published. Accompanying his ...

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,...

David Novros' Kinesthetic Experiences at Paula Cooper

A week after the closing of David Novros: Paintings 1966, a sparse exhibition of three historic works at Kayne Griffin Corcoran in Los Angeles, Paula Cooper Gallery in New York opened David Novros...

The Blue Rhythms of Idris Khan

The work of British artist Idris Khan deals with accumulation and compression. Khan accumulates visual content from the material framework of his everyday experiences—photographs of buildings, pag...

Inside the Icelandic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019

A mystical world of color, sound, and hair extensions awaits visitors to the Icelandic Pavilion of the 2019 Venice Biennale. The installation is the creation of Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, a.k.a. Sho...

Why this Mark Rothko Painting is Now Worth $50 Million

Last week, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art decommissioned “Untitled, 1960,” a prized painting by Mark Rothko, selling it for just over $50 million (50,095,250 USD to be precise) at Sotheby’...

Un Art Autre - Abstraction in Postwar Paris at Levy Gorvy

In 1952, the French art critic and curator Michel Tapié coined the phrase “Un Art Autre,” meaning “art of another kind,” to refer to a trend he perceived in abstract art away from rationality, and...

Why Ben Heller Was a Powerful Figure for Abstract Art

Ben Heller, one of the giants of 20th Century art, has passed away at age 93. Heller was not an artist—he was a businessman who made a relatively modest living in the textile industry. It is what ...

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...

Jane Benson’s Abstract Interpretations of Suffragette Mona Caird's Revolutionary Work

When German author W.G. Sebald died in 2001, he was considered the most talented English-language author alive. The Rings of Saturn, published in 1995, was among his most beloved books. In 2017, B...

Hard edge, a response to gestural

The term Hard Edged was coined by art critic Jules Langsner and art historian Peter Selz, to describe a tendency that was becoming prominent in the late 1950s in the work of multiple California-ba...

Ruth Asawa’s Hanging Odes to Natural Forms

If you have ever stood in the midst of a Ruth Asawa installation, you understand that there exists an art outside of art; an art forged not from theory, but from direct expression, instinct and in...

5 Abstract Art Exhibitions to See During the Biennale 2019

Today we offer our round up of five of the most exciting abstract art exhibitions you can see while visiting the 2019 Venice Biennale. The 58th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia ...

6 Sculptures Inspired by Nature You Can See This Summer

An upcoming exhibition in London this summer promises viewers a unique opportunity to examine the intersection of figuration and abstraction in contemporary sculpture, by way of an assortment of s...

On a Journey with Antoni Tàpies

When Antoni Tàpies died in 2012, he left a massive hole in the Spanish culture. He was easily the most influential Spanish visual artist of his generation, and in many respects it is hard to imagi...

Lee Krasner at the Barbican - A Look at An Artist of Her Own

This summer, The Barbican Art Gallery in London will mount Lee Krasner: Living Colour, the first European retrospective of the work of Lee Krasner in more than half a century. The exhibition will ...

Joan Mitchell's Polyptych Paintings Land at David Zwirner

Visitors to The Long Run exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York (which closes 5 May 2019) were no doubt transfixed when they first set eyes on the selection of large-scale dipty...

Why Mohamed Melehi Was Crucial for Postcolonial Moroccan Art

A new exhibition titled New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School, at The Mosaic Rooms in London, brings to light the artistic achievements of Mohamed Melehi (b. 1936), an influentia...

Diversity is Key to the Future of American Abstract Artists

When American Abstract Artists (AAA) was founded in 1936, most critics and curators considered abstract art too “European” to be “American.” The irony of that prejudice, of course, is that America...

Robert Motherwell's Monumental Approach to Painting

Some words do not retain the same meaning over time. Monumental is one such word. Its value— at least in relation to painting—is currently being tested in Sheer Presence: Monumental Paintings by R...

Why Jackie Winsor is Eccentrically Abstract

The work of Jackie Winsor provides a perfectly wonderful foil to academic theories about contemporary abstraction. The debate that drives most current conversations about abstract art inevitably r...

Key Figures of the Pattern and Decoration Movement

The Pattern and Decoration movement holds a special place in contemporary art history. Emerging out of the Feminist Art Movement of the 1960s, Pattern and Decoration declared itself as a sort of “...

In The Spotlight - Georgia O'Keeffe's Gorgeous Watercolors

It may be hard to imagine a time when Georgia O’Keeffe was unsure of herself, or lacked confidence in her technique. Today, looking back at photographs of her knowing stare, her eyes glistening wi...

Janet Echelman’s Monumental Hanging Abstractions

A new, monumental, outdoor art installation recently premiered in the air space above The Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. Titled Earthtime 1.26 (Hong Kong), it is the newest work by Janet Echelman, ...

Art Of Desire - Huguette Caland at Tate St Ives

This summer, Lebanese-born artist Huguette Caland will have her first solo museum exhibition in the United Kingdom, at the Tate St Ives in Cornwall. Born in 1931 in Beirut, Caland moved to Paris i...

The Tall-Standing Sculpture of Beverly Pepper

Beverly Pepper makes art that subverts the power of the traditional art environment, and returns agency to everyday viewers in the natural and built worlds. Later this year, Pepper will turn 97, a...

The Importance of Adolph Gottlieb's Burst series

Adolph Gottlieb once said, “The role of the artist, of course, has always been that of image-maker. Different times require different images.” Gottlieb witnessed multiple distinctly different time...

Finding the Best Art for Interior Designers

The relationship between art and interior design is complex. Every interior designer has an ongoing need for original fine art. But few fine artists embark on the creation of new work with the sta...

Hirshhorn Extends Charline von Heyl’s Critically Acclaimed Exhibition

Two months after it opened at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, Snake Eyes, a retrospective of the work of Charline von Heyl, was closed to the public—a casualty of a pr...

Sanford Wurmfeld's Impressive Color Painting

The name Sanford Wurmfeld may not immediately ring bells with people outside of the art field, but it elicits awe and admiration from most artists who know his work. The self-taught painter has be...

The Revolutionary, Yet Overlooked Weavings of Otti Berger

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus this year, it is a fitting time to remember the inspiring, yet tragic story of Otti Berger, one of the most influential women to study and then...

Anton Ginzburg’s Interpretations of Eastern Europe's Modernist-Formal Vocabulary

For the past few years, Russian-born multi-media artist Anton Ginzburg has been exploring novel ways to bridge trends in global contemporary art with the aesthetic principles of early Russian Mode...

Tracing the Designs of Barbara Stauffacher Solomon

Part artist, part dancer, and part designer, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon is best known for her work in the field of graphic. She was the mastermind behind the so-called “Super Graphics” that helpe...

The Movie-Like Story of Willem de Kooning's Woman-Ochre painting

Next month, restoration will begin on one of the most notorious paintings of the 20th Century: “Woman-Ochre” (1955), by Willem de Kooning. The painting is part of the famous Woman series, in which...

Victor Vasarely's Shaping Forms at Centre Pompidou Paris

For the first time in more than 50 years, a major Victor Vasarely retrospective is on view at a French museum. Centre Pompidou opened Vasarely: Sharing Forms this past February, bringing together ...

A Look at the Art of Jean Le Moal

Jean Le Moal came of age as a painter in Paris in the late 1930s, just as Europe both at its cultural height and also descending into chaos. His entire career expressed echoes of this dichotomy. H...

How Alma Thomas Fought Many Wars To Establish Herself

In 1972, at the age of 80, Alma Thomas earned the distinction of becoming the first African American woman to have a solo retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her colorful, abstrac...

Whitney Celebrates the 1960s Color Paintings in a New Exhibition

Bob Thompson died of a heroine overdose at age 28, but he completed nearly 1000 paintings and drawings in his brief career. The Whitney Museum of American Art celebrated his work in a 1996 ret...

5 Current and Upcoming Exhibitions of Female Abstract Artists to Visit

In celebration of International Women’s Day, we are taking time to draw attention to five of our favorite exhibitions by female abstract artists in 2019. Some are on view right now, others are upc...