Color field painting, which emerged in the United States during the 1950s, is characterized by pouring, staining, or spraying thinned paint onto raw canvas to create vast chromatic expanses that are remarkable for their luminosity and gracefulness. Paintings such as Helen Frankenthaler’s Flood (1967) exemplify these artists’ interest in exploring the emotional associations triggered by pure color relationships. Frankenthaler’s work, along with paintings by Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, and Frank Stella constitute one of the crowning achievements of postwar American abstract art.

Surprisingly, there has not been a major exhibition to date that has examined the sources, meaning, and impact of color field painting. Encompassing forty-one large-scale canvases, Color as Field presents a rare opportunity for viewers to fully comprehend the aims of these artists, view their finest works in close relationship to one another, and experience the beauty and sensuality of their pictorial handling of space and color.

Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975 is organized by the American Federation of Arts.

The exhibition is made possible, in part, by grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius. 

PODCAST: Listen to an interview produced to complement Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975.  Recorded in New York in 2007, this interview—divided into eight episodes—features painter Larry Poons in a rare conversation with the exhibition’s guest curator, Karen Wilkin.



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Location: Ingram Gallery


Image (top, right): Morris Louis, Floral V, 1959-1960. Acrylic and magna on canvas, 98 3/8 x 137 13/16 in. Private collection, Denver. © 1993 Marcella Louis Brenner

Image: (middle, right): Helen Frankenthaler. Flood, 1967. Synthetic polymer on canvas, 124 x 140 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Friends of Whitney Museum of American Art 68.12. Photograph Geoffrey Clements. © 2007 Helen Frankenthaler