Untitled 67-B and Untitled 67-B8

Al Held | New York

Arts New York Al Held paintings

Location: 250 Vesey Street, New York, NY 10281

This artwork is not open to the public

About the work

Upon returning to New York in 1952 after studying in Paris, His style rapidly evolved during this period, and the impressionistic mode of his early compositions rapidly developed into monumental canvases which combined the muscular gestures of Franz Kline with the geometric clarity of Ellsworth Kelly. From 1967 to 1979, Held reduced his palette to black and white, eliminating what he perceived as decorative color in order to intensify the clarity, order, and structure of his work. 67-B and 67-B8 exemplify the artist’s aesthetic concerns during this crucial period of his career, its intuitive interplay of circular and rectilinear forms producing a dynamic sense of movement and a harmonious articulation of pictorial space. Bridging the gap between abstract expressionism and minimalism, Held was one of the most significant American painters of the 1960s, and this drawing embodies the innovations he made during the most fertile period of his career.

About Al Held

Al Held was an influential American artist appreciated for his monumental Hard-edge paintings. In his best-known works, Held focused on abstract, geometric forms existing in a non-Euclidean space. Born in Brooklyn, NY on October 12, 1928, he spent two years serving in the US Navy before traveling to Paris on a GI scholarship. Returning to New York in the 1950s, his Abstract Expressionist compositions of thick, gestural marks gave way to the saturated colors and geometric forms found in his Alphabet paintings. He enjoyed a long and successful career and died in 2005 in Camerata, Italy, at the age of 76.