1951-T No. 3

Clyfford Still

1951

A monumental oil-on-canvas painting in which Clyfford Still builds a raw, elemental presence by laying a vast, textured field of black against narrow, jagged bands of color to evoke emotion without representation.

You first register the black as an almost architectural, heavily worked mass whose torn, irregular edges and scraped surface reveal thin vertical slivers of cream, orange, yellow and cobalt like seams of light.

A defining work of Abstract Expressionism, it helped move painting away from depiction toward immersive, nonrepresentational fields where scale, paint surface, and color aim to produce a direct, bodily response.

Palette

Exhibitions

Modern Paintings

1961

The New American Painting as Shown in Eight European Countries 1958...

1959

Frank Stella

1970

American Drawings and Watercolors: A Selection from the Collection

1969