Color field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to abstract expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering abstract expressionists. Color field is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favor of an overall consistency of form and process. In color field painting "color is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself."
Kenneth Noland, Beginning, 1958, magna on canvas painting, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Working in Washington, D.C., Noland was a pioneer of the color field movement in the late 1950s.
Henri Matisse, Porte-fenêtre à Collioure (French Window at Collioure), 1914, Centre Georges Pompidou, "Throughout my life, the 20th-century painter whom I've admired the most has been Matisse", Robert Motherwell 1970.
Jack Bush, Big A, 1968. Bush was a Canadian abstract expressionist painter, born in Toronto, Ontario in 1909. He became closely tied to the two movements that grew out of the efforts of the abstract expressionists: color field painting and lyrical abstraction.
Ronnie Landfield, Rite of Spring, 1985. Landfield's work emerged during the 1960s. His works are reflections of both Chinese landscape painting and the color field idiom. His paintings bridge color field painting with lyrical abstraction.
Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the immediate aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depression and Mexican muralists. The term was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates. Key figures in the New York School, which was the epicenter of this movement, included such artists as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Norman Lewis, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell and Theodoros Stamos among others.
David Smith, Cubi VI (1963), Israel Museum, Jerusalem. David Smith was one of the most influential American sculptors of the 20th century.
Barnett Newman, Onement 1, 1948. During the 1940s Barnett Newman wrote several articles about the new American painting.
Richard Pousette-Dart, Symphony No. 1, The Transcendental, 1941–42
Arshile Gorky, The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944), oil on canvas, 731⁄4 × 98" (186 × 249 cm) Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on abstract expressionism. De Kooning said: "I met a lot of artists — but then I met Gorky... He had an extraordinary gift for hitting the nail on the head; remarkable. So I immediately attached myself to him and we became very good friends."