Ad Reinhardt

Abstract Painting . 1960-61

photos: © 2013 Estate of Ad Reinhardt / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York © David Zwirner . + David Zwirner

Comprised entirely of works on loan from public and private collections, this exhibition will include the first room of Reinhardt’s "ultimate" black paintings to be seen in New York since the 1991 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.Reinhardt describes these paintings as: "A square (neutral, shapeless) canvas, five feet wide, five feet high, as high as a man, as wide as a man's outstretched arms (not large, not small, sizeless), trisected (no composition), one horizontal form negating one vertical form (formless, no top, no bottom, directionless), three (more or less) dark (lightless) no-contrasting (colorless) colors, brushwork brushed out to remove brushwork, a matte, flat, free-hand, painted surface (glossless, textureless, non-linear, no hard-edge, no soft edge) which does not reflect its surroundings—a pure, abstract, non-objective, timeless, spaceless, changeless, relationless, disinterested painting—an object that is self-conscious (no unconsciousness) ideal, transcendent, aware of no thing but art (absolutely no anti-art).
David Zwirner

Abstract Painting . 1963