~POST-PAINTERLY ABSTRACTION~

My brief summary of post-painterly abstraction: Post-painterly abstraction is a term created by art critic Clement Greenberg. Greenberg had perceived that there was a new movement in painting that derived from the abstract expressionism of the 1940s and 1950s but "favored openness or clarity" as opposed to the dense painterly surfaces of that painting style.
As painting continued to move in different directions, initially away from abstract expressionism, powered by the spirit of innovation of the time, the term "post-painterly abstraction", which had obtained some currency in the 1960s, was gradually supplanted by minimalism, hard-edge painting, lyrical abstraction, and color field painting.

Post-Painterly Abstraction: A term coined by the critic Clement Greenberg to characterize a broad trend in American painting, beginning in the 1950s, in which abstract painters reacted in various ways against the gestural ‘painterly’ qualities of Abstract Expressionism. Greenberg used the term as the title of an exhibition he organized at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964. He took the word ‘painterly’ (in German ‘malerisch') from the great Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945), who had discussed it in his book Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (1915), translated as Principles of Art History (1932). By it he understood ‘the blurred, broken, loose definition of colour and contour'; Post-Painterly Abstractionists, in contrast, moved towards ‘physical openness of design, or toward linear clarity, or toward both'. The characterization was never a very exact one, but essentially it described a rejection of expressive brushwork in favour of broad areas of unmodulated colour. The term thus embraces more precisely defined types of abstract art including Colour Field Painting and Hard-Edge Painting. Among the leading figures of the trend are Helen Frankenthaler, Al Held, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Frank Stella.

An alternative term that was used for a while but did not catch on in the same way is New Abstraction. It comes from the title of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum, New York, in 1963. Several of the artists who featured in Greenberg's exhibition had earlier appeared in this one.

IAN CHILVERS. "Post-Painterly Abstraction." A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art. 1999. Retrieved June 06, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O5-PostPainterlyAbstraction.html

Morris Louis Bernstein

Birth name	Baltimore, Maryland
Born	November 28, 1912
Died	September 7, 1962 (aged 49) Washington, DC.
Nationality	American
Field	Painting
Training	Maryland Institute College of Art
Movement	Color Field painting, Abstract Expressionism, Post-painterly abstraction, Washington Color School
Works	in museums: Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Influenced by	Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock

Morris Louis: (born Morris Louis Bernstein, 28 November 1912 – 7 September 1962) was an American painter. During the 1950s he became one of the earliest exponents of Color Field painting. Living in Washington, DC. Louis, along with Kenneth Noland and other Washington painters formed an art movement that is known today as the Washington Color School.