Infinite Choices: Abstract Drawings by Al Held

Exhibition Website

Aug 22 2018 - Jul 7 2019


American artist Al Held (1928-2005) came to prominence in the 1950s as an Abstract Expressionist. In the 1960s, his gestural painting moved towards a more geometrical and hard-edged approach in his abstraction. 

The four india ink drawings in the exhibition are from this transitional period, still very calligraphic and expressive. His paintings at this time became more concrete, including a series referred to as his “alphabet paintings” where the space and forms explode beyond the canvas edge, hardly recognizable as letterforms. These works led to his well-known geometric abstract paintings that defy their flatness through large-scale compositions with complex cubical perspectives.

“One of the profound powers of the artist is that he can will, or choose, to become anything he wills or chooses,” Held said in 1989. “The art doesn’t come from his soul, or from his genes, it comes from his choices. And those choices are infinite and hopeful.” The exuberant abstract drawings featured in the exhibition exemplify the artist’s “infinite choices” as he mined the endless possibilities of abstraction, limiting his palette at the time to a deep black ink on a white ground and his gestures to bold strokes hardly contained by the edges of the paper.


Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website
Image: Al Held (American, 1928-2005), 67-B3, 1967, India ink on paper, 20 x ½ x 24 ¾ inches, Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, University of Richmond Museums, Gift of Carole and Marcus Weinstein, H2018.11.04 © Al Held / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photograph by Taylor Dabney
  • Works on Paper
  • American
  • 20th Century
  • Abstraction
  • Al Held

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