Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, Upper East Side Until Aug 14 2020
In the 1960s
a group of avant-garde painters began to push abstraction in new directions,
leading to the emergence of several divergent styles. Helen Frankenthaler
applied thinned acrylic washes to the unprimed cotton canvas, richly saturating
it like a dye, and Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski methodically
poured, soaked, or sprayed paint onto canvases, thus eliminating the gestural
appearance that had been central to Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s and 1950s.
In these new works, figure and ground became one and the same, united through
color. While Alma Thomas adeptly applied color theory while using expressive
marks, still others approached relationships of form and color through
investigations of optical perception or produced precise, geometric
compositions that, as Guggenheim curator Lawrence Alloway described in 1966, “combined
economy of form and neatness of surface with fullness of color.”
The works
in this presentation chart several of the varied and complex courses
nonrepresentational art followed in the 1960s and into the 1970s. The Fullness
of Color: 1960s Painting reflects the museum’s historical engagement with this
artistic period, and, while far from comprehensive, seeks to provide a point of
departure for future collection growth that may further illustrate the richness
of 20th-century painting.
The
Fullness of Color: 1960s Paintings is organized by Megan Fontanella, Curator,
Modern Art and Provenance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, with support from
Indira Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant, Collections.
Major
support for The Fullness of Color is provided by Barbara Slifka and LLWW
Foundation.