Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still (1904-1980), American painter, best known for large-scale abstract works. In these paintings, jagged verticals of bright color cut through immense fields of dark, richly textured paint. Still was a major figure in abstract expressionism, a movement of the late 1940s and 1950s in which artists asserted their individuality through spontaneous and expressive methods of painting. Still’s wall-size paintings and large, flowing forms also influenced the development of color-field painting in the 1950s and 1960s.

Still’s early works are desolate landscapes, some of which contain distorted figures; in paintings of the mid-1930s broad expanses of blue and white evoke the wide-open landscapes of the American West, with thickly textured, ambiguous forms rising powerfully in the foreground. The dreamlike quality of these works associates them with surrealism, although Still insisted his work was free of influence from any previous style.

By 1943 Still had begun producing totally abstract paintings, with ragged, flamelike forms that retain the dramatic emphasis on verticals he had established in earlier work. He soon evolved a style of rough, irregular patches of interlocking colors, as in 1946-H (Indian Red and Black) (1946, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.). In the 1950s his paintings became larger and more open as he simplified his forms; he sometimes left large areas of canvas unpainted, the woven texture of the canvas contrasting with the richly painted surface around it. By the 1960s he had turned from drama to lyricism in a series of more sensuous and loosely painted fields of color.

Born in Grandin, North Dakota, Still grew up in the state of Washington and in rural Alberta, Canada. He earned a B.A. in art from Spokane University in 1933, then studied for two years at Washington State College (now Washington State University), where he stayed on as a teacher until 1941. From 1941 to 1943 he lived in Oakland, California. There he met Mark Rothko, a leader in the color-field painting movement. In 1943 Still took a job teaching art at the Richmond Professional Institute in Virginia, but he left in 1945 to move to New York City. He taught at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) from 1946 to 1950 and was instrumental in bringing abstract expressionism to the West Coast. He lived and taught in New York City from 1950 to 1961, then moved to Maryland where he remained until his death.