Colorfield Remix

Colorfield remix kicks off this month with lots of great events starting this week! Here's a primer on what it's all about.

The event honors the 1950s and 1960s Color Field visual art movement and the Washington Color School, which put Washington, DC on the art world map. ColorField.remix includes exhibitions, public art projects, artists' talks, lectures, children's programs, and special events honoring Color Field and Washington Color School painters as well as contemporary artists influenced by those movements. The project was conceived by The Kreeger Museum and is being held in partnership with Cultural Tourism DC, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Washington, DC Convention & Tourism Corporation.

What is Color Field painting?

Color Field painting, an abstract style that emerged in the 1950s following Abstract Expressionism, is characterized by canvases painted primarily with stripes, washes and fields of solid color. The first serious and critically acclaimed art movement to originate in the nation’s capital, Washington Color School was central to the larger Color Field movement. Its roots were with painters who showed their work at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, a short-lived museum promoting contemporary art during the 1960s. Its 1965 “Washington Color Painters” show formalized recognition of the Washington Color School of painters “More than 40 years after that historic D.C. exhibition, their paintings reveal not just a shared passion for color but highly individualistic visions,” writes Jean Lawlor Cohen, guest co-curator at The Kreeger Museum. “They represent a moment when Washington heeded Willem de Kooning’s call for ‘hallelujah painting.’”

Among the best known Color Field artists are Leon Berkowitz, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jules Olitski, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Frank Stella and Alma Thomas and Larry Zox. Among the best known Washington Color School artists are Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Howard Mehring and Paul Reed.

More information about the remix: www.washington.org/colorfieldremix