Hard-edge painting

Hard-edge painting can be seen as a subdivision of Post-Painterly Abstraction, which in turn emerged from Color Field painting. The term was coined by the Californian critic Jules Langster in 1959 to describe those abstract painters, particularly on the West Coast, who in their reaction to the more painterly or gestural forms (=the application of paint in free sweeping gestures with the brush) of Abstract Expressionism adopted a particularly impersonal paint application and delineated areas of color with particular sharpness and clarity. This kind of approach to abstract painting became extremely widespread in the 1960s.

Two major exhibitions of hard-edge painting were held in the 1960s: Four Abstract Classicists (subtitled California Hard-Edge), and the second one simply called California Hard-Edge Painting.

Hard-edge painting consists of rough, straight edges that are geometrically consistent. It encompasses rich solid colors, neatness of surface, and arranged forms all over the canvas. Some of the well-known Hard-Edge Painting artists are: Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Liberman, and Helen Lundeberg.

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