Al Held
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Al Held
(b New York, 12 Oct 1928). American painter. He was in Paris from 1950 to 1952, along with Ellsworth Kelly, George Sugarman, Jack Youngerman (b 1926) and Sam Francis. On his return to New York he made contact with Abstract Expressionist painters, painting in a subdued, impressionistic manner. The hard-edge paintings that developed from these works were partly a reaction to painterly rhetoric, but were remarkable for their forceful presence, the effect of robust simplicity and mammoth scale, with alphabet forms seeming to expand beyond the limits of the canvas. In 1967 he rejected the flatness, symmetry and strictures against illusionism that at the time dominated American painting and embarked on the diagrammatic reinterpretation of Cubism that over the next 20 years was to be refined into a sophisticated abstract style. By 1974 he had established a linear vocabulary that contrasted inscribed circles with the thicker bars of cubes or prisms, initially in black and white and later in colour. These geometric solids, appearing by turns opaque, transparent, or as impossible fictions, presented a peculiarly abstract space, the world of planetary motions or equally of molecular structure. Despite their clean-cut look, the paintings originated in loose painterly improvisation, with all the re-working erased by an electric sander. In his distrust of theory and his insistence that order must be won from chaos, Held thus maintained in his own style the ethic of Abstract Expressionism.
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Al Held
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Al Held
| Al Held | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 12, 1928 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | July 27, 2005 (aged 76) |
| Nationality | American |
| Field | Painting |
| Training | Art Students League of New York, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris |
| Movement | Abstract expressionism, Post-Painterly Abstraction, Geometric abstraction, Hard-edge painting |
Al Held (October 12, 1928 – July 27, 2005) was an American Abstract expressionist painter. He was particularly well known for his large scale Hard-edge paintings.
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Background and education
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1928, Held showed no interest in art until leaving the Navy in 1947. Inspired by his friend Nicholas Krushenick, Held enrolled in the Art Students League of New York. In 1949, using the support of the G.I. Bill, he went to Paris for three years, to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He returned to New York in 1953, to struggle with his work for several years.
Career
After his first solo Abstract expressionist exhibition in 1959, Held's large-scale paintings of colourful, simple abstract geometric forms gained increasing recognition in America and Europe. In 1962, he was appointed to the Yale University Faculty Of Art (where he would teach until 1980). In 1965, the critic Irving Sandler curated the critically acclaimed Concrete Expressionism show at New York University featuring the work of painters Al Held and Knox Martin and the sculptors Ronald Bladen, George Sugarman and David Weinrib.[1]
In 1966, Held was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and received the Logan Medal of the arts. Feeling that he'd reached the end of his style's potential, he shifted in 1967 to black and white images that dealt with challenging perspectives and "spatial conundrums". Some critics dismissed this work as simply disorienting; others declared it Held's finest achievement to date. By the late 1970s, he had re-introduced colour to his work.
In his later years, Held earned commissions of up to one million dollars. In 2005, he completed a large, colourful mural in the New York City Subway system, at East 53rd Street and Lexington.
At age 76, Held was found dead in his villa swimming pool near Camerata, Italy, on July 27, 2005. It is believed he died of natural causes.
See also
References
- ^ Irving Sandler, From Avant-Garde to Pluralism: An On-The-Spot History (Hard Press Editions, 2006.)
Books
- Irving Sandler, From Avant-Garde to Pluralism: An On-The-Spot History, (Hard Press Editions, 2006.) ISBN 1-889097-68-3
External links
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Oxford Grove Art
The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.
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