PH-585 (1952-A)
Clyfford Still
CLYFFORD STILL, 1952. OIL ON CANVAS.
A field of colour, torn at the seams. The movement is visceral across the canvas, almost ominous as the dark blues seem to grow across the background of brightness and then, in the corner, a flash of yellow comes alive, emerging out of the oppression. Clyfford Still may not be a household name in the way that Pollock or Rothko have become, but it was him who laid the foundations of the entire movement. In 1938, years before his contemporaries, he moved away from figurative work into pure abstraction, allowing colours and the movement of paint to communicate emotion quite unlike any had done before. Dragging palette knives across the paint, the works took on a sense of motion. He combined the two styles of ‘Colour Field’ painting and ‘Action Painting’, to create meditative works that felt tangibly alive, even angry, and this influence can be seen across the movements that followed him.