Field of colours
Hard-edge abstraction was part of a general tendency to move away from the expressive qualities of gestural abstraction
Hard-edge painting is a tendency in the late 1950s and 1960s art that is closely related to post-painterly abstraction and colour field painting.
It describes an abstract style that combines the clear composition of geometric abstraction with the intense colour and bold, unitary forms of colour field painting. Although it was first identified with Californian artists, today the phrase is used to describe one of the most distinctive tendencies in abstract painting throughout the United States in the 1960s. Cooler yet still spiritual, it can track its influences way back to Synthetic Cubism, Park Avenue Cubism, De Stijl, Suprematism and the Bauhaus. Hard-edge abstraction was part of a general tendency to move away from the expressive qualities of gestural abstraction. Many painters also sought to avoid the shallow, post-Cubist space of Willem de Kooning’s work, and instead adopted the open fields of colour seen in the work of Barnett Newman. Hard-edge painting is known for its economy of form, fullness of colour, impersonal execution, and smooth surface planes.
Category: Art & Design
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