Press Release Hard Lines - Origins and Aspects of Hard Edge Painting

FRIEZE MASTERS - PRESS RELEASE HARD LINES - ORIGINS AND ASPECTS OF HARD EDGE PAINTING

For the 2020 online edition of Frieze Masters America, he continued to teach the substance ARCHEUS/POST-MODERN, London and of what he had taught at the Bauhaus at Black SCHACKY Düsseldorf are making a joint Mountain College. presentation: Hard Lines - origins and aspects of Hard Edge painting. The presentation will focus During the 1950s, movements of geometric on the origins and development of hard edge abstraction and op art developed and artists with abstraction on both sides of the Atlantic during similar concerns formed international groups to the middle of the 20th century. further the exchange of ideas. This new wave found attention through important exhibitions in the USA: Post-Painterly Abstraction curated by Clement Greenberg at LACMA in 1964, which championed artists who rejected Abstract Expressionism’s grandiosity, The Responsive Eye at MoMA in 1965 and Systemic Painting at the Guggenheim in 1966. Through the curation of these exhibitions, which included many of the artists we propose to present, the common threads of hard-edge abstraction were pulled tight.

Julije Knifer, Meander Composition A, 1960

Rather than growing as a unified international group, hard edge developed separately in Europe and the USA but held common origins. Exponents of hard edge developed the disciplines of De Stijl, holding onto Van Doesberg’s key philosophy that all but the most essential forms and colours should be excluded. This credo was revered at the Bauhaus by teachers and pupils alike and the roots of hard edge painting, whereby abrupt transitions in colour or tone became the conceptual structure, took hold. When Josef Albers fled Germany for Josef Albers, Homage to the Square, 1959 Thomas Downing, Swap Series #9 (Triptych), 1967

INCLUDED ARTISTS

Josef Albers | Max Bill | Theo van Doesberg | Thomas Downing | Günther Fruhtrunk Wassily Kandinsky | Ellsworth Kelly | Julije Knifer | Imi Knoebel Verena Loewensberg | Agnes Martin | Howard Mehring | François Morellet Kenneth Noland | Bridget Riley | Richard Serra | Victor Vasarely

ARCHEUS / POST-MODERN Brian Balfour-Oatts [email protected] +44 (0)7979 695079 www.archeus.com

Schacky Art & Advisory Daniel von Schacky [email protected] +49 211 1580 4900 www.schacky-art.com Bridget Riley, Right Angle Curves Study No.4, 1966