Abstract Expressionism In The Color Field

During the mid-twentieth century, there was a new type of painting known as color field, which had originated from abstract expressionism. To be fully specific, color field painting began in the late 1940s and ended in the mid-1960s. Color field painting emerged in New York City and it was characterized by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas, which as a result created areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. This movement of painting placed less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action, but focused more on overall consistency of form and process.

The reasons that made abstract expressionism and color field painting similar is that abstract expressionism conveyed an artist’s attitudes and emotions through nontraditional and usually nonrepresentational ways on a canvas. In contrast, color field painting emphasized more on color and put less significance on the surface of the painting. Also, another important distinction that made color field painting different from abstract expressionism was the paint handling.

They desired a type of painting that would simply speak for itself. As years passed by, more and more artists gained interest in color field painting, so they started using formats of stripes, targets, simple geometric patterns and references to landscape imagery and to nature for their artwork.

Even today in twenty-first century, the best known artist of color field painting has to be none other than, Mark Rothko. Rothko was born on September 25th, 1903 in Dvinsk, Russian Empire, which is now modern day Latvia. At the age of 10, Rothko and his family was forced