Hard Edge Painting
Techniques. Resources. Creative Processes. Genres
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Hard Edge Painting
It is the type of abstract painting characterized by areas of flat color with sharp, clear (or “hard”) edges.
The well-delimited areas of color, abruptly separated, differ from those of color field painting, where the boundary between one area and another is blurred (think of Mark Rothko’s work).
Generally, just as the edges are sharp, the colors are also pure, flat. When we speak of hard edge painting, we usually speak of simple forms, full colors, order, and “neatness.” There is no gestuality (when the brushstroke or the way in which the color is applied already expresses a mood, a brushstroke that can be “sloppy” as emotions usually are).
The term “hard edge painting” was used for the first time in 1959 to define the paintings of an exhibition called Four Abstract Classicists (four painters among whom we find Karl Benjamin, author of the works used to illustrate this post). It was an exhibition held in California, and it attracted a lot of attention because it was precisely the “counterpart” of the gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism (which had turned New York into the new capital of Western art; we are referring, for example, to the work of Jackson Pollock).
Although it is a term used primarily to refer to American geometric abstract painting from that time onwards, we can also use it to describe painting from previous decades and from other latitudes (to give an indisputable example: the work of Piet Mondrian).
Image: Works by Karl Benjamin exhibited in the Gallery Louis Stern Fine Arts of Los Angeles
Recommended links:
Abstract Expressionism in 5 Points.
Abstract Expressionism, Liberation of Emotions.
The Suprematist Compositions of Malévich.
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