Colour Field Painting

- Colour-Field painting is an abstract style.

- Started in 1950s after abstract expressionism.

- Painted using large areas of solid colour.

- Meant to take references to nature out of art and move toward modern art.

- Artists wanted a big, solid, and uniform piece of art.

- Is cool and sombre.

- The painting is meant to be seen so that the viewer is immersed in color environment.

- Painters related to colour-field painting are: Ellsworth Kelly, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella, and Morris Louis.

- Typical painters that use colour-field painting are: Rothko, Newman and Still.

- Used in unusual ways with combinations of curved and straight edges.

- Colour-field painting took time to get used to.

- Nine out of ten people still don't accept it.

- It was got even more unpopular as time passed.

- Involved a strong personal emotion, a painterly quality, and occasionally cubism.

- The elements of a colour-field painting are pure, unchanged areas of color; flat, two-dimensional space; monumental scale; and the varying shape of the canvas itself.

- Many colour field painting is described as having a "contemplative" stillness or intensity.

- This type of painting creates a cloudy depth and unique atmosphere.

- The painters made it so that the canvas has no center of attention.

Biography