Hard Edge

A form of Abstraction which flourished in America during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and lasted a few years longer in Britain although it could be argued it never really took hold. This movement was a variation of what art critic Clement Greenberg (1909-94) called Post-Painterly Abstraction. It was a trend away from gestural Abstract Expressionism as practised by Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and others, towards a smoother, sharper visual language. The term Hard-Edge painting was first used in 1959 by the art historian and critic Jules Langsner, (1911–1967) when describing the non-figurative pictures of four West Coast artists Karl Benjamin, (1925-2012), Lorser Feitelson, (1898-1978), Frederick Hammersley,(1919–2009) and John McLaughlin, (1898–1976) whom he had brought together in an exhibition entitled Four Abstract Classicists, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. American-based British-born art critic Lawrence Alloway, (1926-1990) best summed up the movement as featuring ‘economy of form,’ ‘fullness of color,’ ‘neatness of surface,’. The few British exponents of the movement included Robyn Denny, Edward Piper, Roy Conn and Leslie Duxbury.