Hard Edge Painting: Its Artists, Paintings, and Influences
Hard edge painting refers to a style of oil painting that is related to various movements and is distinguished by an abrupt transition between areas of solid color that involves many different painting techniques.
Developed as a reaction to some of the forms of Abstract Expressionism, hard-edged painting is not so much a movement in itself but rather a trend found initially in many artists who came together for an exhibition of this art form in 1959. at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art called “Four Abstract Classicists.” The artists who participated in this exhibition were John McLaughlin, Frederick Hammersley, Lorser Feitelson and Karl Benjamin.
When the exhibition later moved to Britain, Lawrence Alloway, a British art curator and critic, also called it “California Hard-edge” because California was considered the center and birthplace of this style of oil painting. The term “hard edge painting” was actually coined by Peter Selz, Los Angeles Times art critic Jules Langsner in 1959, who were instrumental in achieving an artist collaboration for the first representative exhibition of this form of painting.
Even before that representative exhibition, hard-edge painting works date back to American artists Josef Albers (1888-1976), the Bauhaus artist who began his series of oil paintings at Asheville, Carolina’s Black Mountain College. North in 1949, and 1949 by Ellsworth Kelly. work from his Private Collection, “Window, Museum of Art, Paris”. Another early example is “Contracomposition V” (1924) by Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931), the Dutch painter and founder of the De Stijl movement.
Hard-edge painting is characterized not only by abrupt transitions of acrylic or oil color, but also by the theme of paint that dominates the entire canvas. According to Lawrence Alloway, “the whole image becomes a unit …” Unlike most other forms of painting, there is no representation or feeling of the subject that is placed on a stage or background. There is generally no clearance in a hard edge painting. In general, acrylic or oil paints are used with a number of shades limited to two or three and solid colors with no variations in tone. Sharp and precise contours, wide areas of light, and the rendering of geometric shapes rather than abstract images are hallmarks of the hard-edged style.
Hard-edge painting has many influences on movements such as synthetic cubism, geometric abstraction, color field painting, Bauhaus, and De Stijl. Emerging from Color Field, hard-edge painting is considered a branch of post-painting abstraction.
From the first exhibition in 1959, hard-edge painting became widespread in the 1960s with artists from the West Coast and East Coast of the United States creating representative works of the hard-edge style. Some of the best known works include “Broadway” by Ellsworth Kelly (1958), “Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red” (1966) and “Dark Blue Curve” (1995), “Hyena Stomp” by Frank Stella (1962 ). and “Harran II” (1967), and “Temple of Radiant Yellow” by Richard Anuszkiewicz (1982).
Avant-garde painting has established itself as an important form of modern art that has absorbed influences from many movements and yet has become a distinctive form that has been embraced by many artists. A recent exhibition in 2005 in Los Angeles demonstrates its continued popularity.