| ABSTRACT : Al Held was one of the most ambitious American painters of the 20th century.
Primarily known as a pioneer of hard-edge abstraction, Held (1928–2005) continuously evolved his abstract painting towards greater complexity in order to formulate unseen truths. Born in Brooklyn in 1928, Held studied at the Art Students League in New York, aspiring to paint social realist murals. While working in Paris from 1951–53, he began to identify as a second generation Abstract Expressionist. Throughout the 1950s he painted heavily impastoed canvases, determined to give structure to gesture. By the end of the decade Held began using acrylic paint for geometric shapes, giving his paintings a hard-edged clarity. The resulting series, most famously the Alphabet paintings of the 1960s, established his signature style of monumental specificity. |