Silkscreen
Al Norte Interior (To the Northern Interior)
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Another postwar veteran amongst the colorfield painters, Kelly lived in Paris after the war and studied art courtesy of the G.I. Bill. While living in Paris, he was inspired by the reflection of an arched bridge in water. This inspiration led to his now familiar hard-edge painting style that is about pure form and undetailed color. Kelly combined his interest in nature with the Constructivist tradition of mathematical principles. The result is a sort of visual shorthand that comments on our surroundings through abstract shapes. Kelly has received numerous awards for his work and recently had a retrospective of his work in well-known museums in New York, Los Angeles, London and Munich. His works are included in private collections and museums throughout the world. One of his most recent awards was the 1998 New York Governor?s Arts Award. In this 1970 silkscreen work titled Yellow/Black, Kelly uses shapes in bold colors to enclose in a rectangular format. At the time that he produced these works, the critics expressed their view that Kelly was introducing a sensuousness into contemporary art. Some observers are able to feel the unrelenting sexual tension lying beneath the surface of these rectangularly formatted works.
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Known as one of the Colorfield painters, Olitski developed his own unique method of this style of painting. First, he saturated an unprimed canvas with paint by dragging it through a trough of acrylic paint. The next step involved spraying paint on the already wet canvas. Sometimes this step involved one spray gun and other times Olitski would use as many as three at once. This spray gun method allowed him to achieve differences in the densities of color. Summer Seizure exemplifies this technique employed by Olitski. He abandoned this method upon discovering how dangerous the fumes were that were emitted while spraying with the Magna acrylic paint. He wisely decided to change to the water-based Aqua-tec. Once he changed paints he started working with a variety of nozzles for better control and no longer needed to use more than one spray gun at once.