Works
  • Vorcex IV
    Al Held
    Vorcex IV, 1984
  • Trajan's Edge IV
    Al Held
    Trajan's Edge IV, 1983
  • 73.3A & 4B
    Al Held
    73.3A & 4B, 1973
  • A 21/22
    Al Held
    A 21/22, 1972-1973
  • A 23/24
    Al Held
    A 23/24, 1972-1973
  • A 25
    Al Held
    A 25, 1972-1973
  • 72-A3 & A4
    Al Held
    72-A3 & A4, 1972
  • 72-B5 & B6
    Al Held
    72-B5 & B6, 1972
  • 72-B7
    Al Held
    72-B7, 1972
  • A 15/16
    Al Held
    A 15/16, 1972
  • A 27/28
    Al Held
    A 27/28, 1972
  • A-11/12
    Al Held
    A-11/12, 1972
  • A-7/8
    Al Held
    A-7/8, 1972
  • Untitled
    Al Held
    Untitled, 1961
  • 67.9
    Al Held
    67.9, 1967
  • Horizontal abstract artwork by Al Held. Square and triangular shapes stretch across the page in black india ink.
    Al Held
    60-288, 1960
  • Abstract drawing by Al Held. Artwork is of dark ink in rectangular form on off-white paper, a circle and triangle shapes visible within the rectangular form.
    Al Held
    60-317, 1960
  • Horizontal black and white abstract image with round and squiggly shapes.
    Al Held
    60-34, 1960
  • Horizontal abstract black and white image with rectangular and curving shapes.
    Al Held
    60-56, 1960
  • Horizontal abstract image with a thick black circular shape in the center of the white paper.
    Al Held
    60-82, 1960
  • Victoria IX
    Al Held
    Victoria IX, 1991
  • Orion V
    Al Held
    Orion V, 1991
  • Scand III
    Al Held
    Scand III, 1990
  • Roberta's Trip
    Al Held
    Roberta's Trip, 1985
  • Giza Gate III
    Al Held
    Giza Gate III, 1976
  • Solar Wind VII
    Al Held
    Solar Wind VII, 1974
  • Cumulus II
    Al Held
    Cumulus II, 1971
  • Delphi I
    Al Held
    Delphi I, 1970
  • Blue Circle
    Al Held
    Blue Circle, 1964
  • Untitled
    Al Held
    Untitled, 1954-55
Exhibitions
Biography
Al Held (1928 - 2005) was one of the most ambitious and influential American painters of the late 20th century. Primarily known as a pioneer of hard-edge abstraction, Held continuously evolved his abstract painting to formulate unseen truths.
 
Born in Brooklyn in 1928, Held first studied art at the Art Students League in New York, aspiring to paint social realist murals. While working in Paris from 1951–53, he began to identify as a second generation Abstract Expressionist. Throughout the 1950s he painted heavily impastoed canvases, determined to give structure to gesture. By the close of the decade Held began using acrylic paint for geometric shapes, giving his paintings a hard-edged clarity. The resulting series, most famously the Alphabet paintings of the early and mid-60s, established his signature style of monumental specificity.

Between 1967 and 1978, Held restricted his palette to black and white and explored space and volume through interconnected geometric forms with varying vanishing points. In the late 1970s, he reintroduced color, further expanding the paintings’ architectural dimension. After spending six months at the American Academy in Rome in 1981, he became inspired by the perspective, volume, and light of Renaissance art. In his last decades, he executed immense canvases of Baroque spatial complexity and luminosity. Al Held died in 2005 at his home in the Umbrian hill town of Todi, leaving a fifty-year legacy of painting.

Among Held’s notable accomplishments are major public artworks in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York City, Orlando, and elsewhere. He had solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work is in the collections of scores of museums and public collections. Held taught painting and drawing from 1962 to 1980 at Yale University School of Art.

 

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