Original artwork description:

Clyfford Still was an American painter, and one of the leading figures in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately following World War II.

Still's overriding theme is the existential struggle of the human spirit against the forces of nature, a notion that finds expression in the vertical forms that reach defiantly through the majority of his compositions, and a struggle he evoked in his phrase 'the vertical necessity of life.'

His expansive fields of color have sometimes been likened to caves or vast abysses momentarily illuminated by crackling flares of light. A believer in art's moral value in a disorienting modern world, Still would go on to influence a second generation of Color Field painters.

Materials used:

Acrylic on masonite

Tags:

#abstract #contemporary #modern #abstract expressionism #pop art #people #figurative #realism #man #photorealism #hyperrealism #color field #museum #looking at art #looking at painting #clyfford still