Color Field

A branch of abstract painting from the late 1940s to the 1970s that set big, flat or softly stained areas of colour against each other to create an immediate, enveloping experience. Mark Rothko's glowing, hovering rectangles, Barnett Newman's fields cut by vertical 'zips' and Clyfford Still's jagged expanses began it. In the 1950s Helen Frankenthaler poured thinned paint into raw canvas, and Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland followed with veils, stripes, chevrons and targets; Jules Olitski sprayed misty colour and Gene Davis painted rhythmic vertical stripes. There is no visible gesture and no subject: colour itself is the content.

How to tell it apart: calm, uniform expanses or stripes of colour without brushy drama; Abstract Expressionist action painting is turbulent, Minimalism harder-edged and more impersonal.

184 works in the quiz. Play a round on Color Field.

Artists

Mark Rothko · Helen Frankenthaler · Barnett Newman · Adolph Gottlieb · Morris Louis · Kenneth Noland · Gene Davis · Jack Bush · Clyfford Still · Friedel Dzubas · Larry Poons · Jules Olitski

Best-known works

“Orange, Red, Yellow” — Mark Rothko, 1961
“Voice of Fire” — Barnett Newman, 1967
“No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red)” — Mark Rothko, 1951
“White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)” — Mark Rothko, 1950
“No 1” — Mark Rothko, 1954
“Black on Maroon” — Mark Rothko, 1958
“No. 61” — Mark Rothko, 1953
“Vir Heroicus Sublimis” — Barnett Newman, 1950
“Black in Deep Red” — Mark Rothko, 1957
“No. 10” — Mark Rothko, 1958
“Broken Obelisk” — Barnett Newman, 1967
“Black Fire I” — Barnett Newman, 1961
“No.5/No.22” — Mark Rothko, 1950
“No.3/No.13 (Magenta, Black, Green on Orange)” — Mark Rothko, 1949
“Violet, Black, Orange, Yellow on White and Red” — Mark Rothko, 1949
“Tutti-Fruitti” — Helen Frankenthaler, 1966
“Adirondacks” — Helen Frankenthaler, 1992
“Mountains and Sea” — Helen Frankenthaler, 1952
“Painted on 21st Street” — Helen Frankenthaler, 1951
“Round Trip” — Helen Frankenthaler, 1957
“Mauve District” — Helen Frankenthaler, 1966
“Southern Exposure” — Helen Frankenthaler, 2005
“The Wild” — Barnett Newman, 1950
“Onement I” — Barnett Newman, 1948
“Canto VII” — Barnett Newman, 1963
“Partition” — Morris Louis, 1962
“Blue Veil” — Morris Louis, 1958
“Where” — Morris Louis, 1960
“Seal” — Morris Louis, 1959
“Blue Column” — Morris Louis, 1960