Black Paintings
Black Paintings is the name for a series of monochrome pictures in black .
history
The first monochrome picture in black comes from the Russian painter Kasimir Malewitsch : Black Square on a White Background (1915).
In the late 1940s , American artists such as Willem de Kooning , Franz Kline , Mark Rothko , Robert Motherwell , Robert Rauschenberg , Frank Stella and Ad Reinhardt began to deal intensively with the color black.
The black paintings were created against the background of a spirit of optimism in post-war New York, which encompassed art, music, theater and literature and led to a new self-image and a fundamental repositioning of American art.
Painters such as Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock , together with Barnett Newman , Mark Rothko and others, founded the first generation of the New York School , which broke away from the influences of European tradition and would henceforth significantly shape the art of the 20th century. Alongside Paris, New York became the center of the artistic avant-garde.
In his last creative years, Ad Reinhardt concentrated only on the production of black paintings.
Quotes
“Black was a sacred color for the Abstract Expressionists, it was their lapis lazuli; they made a mystique of it, partly perhaps because of its austerity, partly perhaps because there was something splendidly macho in being able to produce a good strong black. "
“Black was a sacred color for the Abstract Expressionists, it was their lapis lazuli ; they made a mystery of it, perhaps partly because of their seriousness or because they saw something wonderfully macho in creating a good bold black. "
literature
- Stephanie Rosenthal: Black Paintings: Robert Rauschenberg, AD Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella . Hatje Cantz , Ostfildern 2006, ISBN 3-7757-1860-5 .