Ed Clark

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Ed Clark
Image Not Available for Ed Clark

Ed Clark

born New Orleans, LA 1926; died Detroit, MI 2019
BiographyEdward Clark was born in New Orleans and raised in Chicago. For years Clark moved between Paris, where he found early success, and New York, where he immersed himself in the dynamism of the postwar art scene. Among Clark’s many innovations are some of the very first shaped canvases; his substitution of the oval for the rectangular form in painting; and, perhaps most striking, his use of push brooms to apply paint to canvas in strong, sweeping gestures. In 1981 the Studio Museum in Harlem featured Clark’s work in a retrospective. His work is held widely by major museums in the U.S., and, other artists recognize Clark as one of the most original and foundational figures in the history of gestural painting.

“In 1956, I got into using a broom or what I like to call ‘the big sweep.’ I wanted to cover a large area. . . . You have to want that straight stroke. It’s like cutting through something really fast; that’s what the straight stroke with the push broom gives you, speed. Maybe it’s something psychological; it’s like cutting through everything.”
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