Untitled

A native of New Orleans, Ed Clark grew up in Chicago and spent the early 1950s in Paris, supported by a G.I. Bill scholarship. In Paris he turned emphatically toward abstraction: “It struck me that if I paint a person—no matter how I do it—it is a lie. The truth is in the physical brushstroke and the subject of the painting is the paint itself.”

After five years overseas, Clark moved to New York City, where in 1957 he began to show works often acknowledged as the first “shaped” paintings. Here collaged elements break the traditional rectangular limits of the canvas, carrying the dynamism of Clark’s brushstrokes into the spaces beyond.