Colour Field Painting

Styles & Movements Modern & Contemporary Art

An abstract painting style categorised within American Expressionism, it is characterised by large-scale canvases painted expansively with flat, solid colour to produce the optical qualities of painting through flatness and colour. Notable colour field artists include Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.

More Definitions

Literalism

A term often used synonymously with minimalism, it refers to a style of art and literature characterised by the portrayal…

Academic Realism

A style of painting that was influenced by European academies of art from the sixteenth century onwards. It was characterised…

Geometric Abstraction

A form of abstract art that uses geometric forms, usually in a non-illusionistic space, to create non-representational or non-objective compositions.…

Suprematism

A twentieth century avant-garde art movement in Russia founded by artist Kazimir Malevich that emphasised the principles of geometry and…

Pastiche

A style associated with postmodern trends in visual art, music and literature, pastiche indicates works of art that imitate or…

Surrealism

An art movement that emerged in twentieth-century France and aimed to express the creativity of the unconscious mind through the…

Primitivism

A tendency in European and American modern art where artists explored the visual vocabulary of the cultures of Africa, Oceania…

Pictorialism

An aesthetic movement in photography during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that focused on composition, light and subject…