Page 32 - "he 2020 Guggenheim issue of World of Art Contemporary Art Magazine

War II art world-yielded a number of divergent styles.
Helen Frankenthaler, who in 1952 had pioneered the
”soak-stain” technique, now regularly applied thinned
THE FULLNESS OF COLOR: acrylic washes to unprimed cotton canvas, richly
1960S PAINTING saturating it like a dye. Others similarly treated figure
and ground as one and the same. Morris Louis, Kenneth
New York - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Noland, and Jules Olitski, for instance, methodically
poured, soaked, or sprayed paint, producing
compositions with a more systematic appearance
The Fullness of Color is organized by Megan Fontanella, than those of their Abstract Expressionist forbearers.
Curator, Modern Art and Provenance, with support from While Alma Thomas also adeptly applied color theory
Indira Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant, Collections. throughout the 1960s and beyond, she nonetheless
Major support for the exhibition is provided by Barbara continued to create expressive marks and draw upon
Slifka and LLWW Foundation. her observations of the natural world. Still other

painters approached relationships of form and color
By the 1960s many American and international artists through investigations of optical perception or through
were pushing abstraction in new directions, exploring a more precise, geometric languages that, as Guggenheim
range of formal possibilities and liberating uses of color curator Lawrence Alloway described in 1966, ”combined
in their work. This shift-which occurred in the wake economy of form and neatness of surface with fullness
of Abstract Expressionism, the largely gestural and of color.” The present exhibition reflects on the
emotive movement that had dominated the post-World museum’s engagement with this vibrant period.

Installation View: The Fullness of Color; August 2020
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo: David Heald, ©
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

32 WORLD of ART