Abstract Painting, 1961

About the Work

A square canvas painted black. Ad Reinhardt's painting is one of his series of 'Abstract Paintings'. These are pictures from which the artist removed everything that painting had previously stood for, in order to arrive at total abstraction: no compositional tension, no brushwork, no colour, no narrative. Only by looking closely at the work will the eye perceive more underneath the black: namely that the area is subdivided into three rows each containing three squares of equal size - and that there is also a hint of colour which varies from work to work and makes its way towards the visible surface.