Color field painting

File:'Beginning', magna on canvas painting by Kenneth Noland, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 1958..jpg

Kenneth Noland, Beginning, magna on canvas painting by Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 1958. Kenneth Noland working in Washington, DC., was a pioneer of the color field movement in the late 1950s.

Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists. Color Field painting is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas; creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favour of an overall consistency of form and process.