Rivaled only by the early years of the 1910s, when abstraction was pioneered in Europe and America, the forty-year period between 1950 and 1990 witnessed dramatic developments in abstract art. This exhibition features twenty-seven paintings by some of the era's most important artists, including Karel Appel, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Morris Louis, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, and Mark Rothko.
Experimentation with various methods of producing an abstraction and applying paint to a surface was common during this time, alternately emphasizing or suppressing traces of the artist’s touch. Selected from the collection of Preston Haskell, Class of 1960, these works together offer a window into the evolution of process, mark-making, and abstraction in the second half of the twentieth century. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.