Post-Painterly Abstraction

A term coined by art critic Clement Greenberg for the title of an exhibition he curated in 1964. Post-painterly abstraction encompasses a broad group of American painters who reacted to Abstract Expressionism, either through the pursuit of Hard-edge abstraction or by creating open compositions of washes and poured areas of color. Other hallmarks of this new generation of painters, according to Greenberg, were thinned-out paint, a lack of an identifiable artistic mark (as in Pollock’s “drips” and “skeins”), a focus on saturated and intense color, and a lack of interest in spontaneity.