Clark’s experiences in the bohemian quarter of Montparnasse and, later, New York’s downtown scene deeply influenced his shift towards abstraction and working on a large scale. In 1956, he adopted the use of a 48-inch push broom to allow him to drive paint across the canvas with great force, a technique known as ‘the big sweep’ and exemplified in works such as Locomotion 1963. Continue reading Ed Clark
Clark would become renowned for his revolutionary use of a push broom as a paintbrush, a technique he first tried in Paris in 1956 and that, along with the shaped canvas, would come to define his practice. Continue reading Ed Clark
One of the early Abstract Expressionist New York painters, Ed Clark first turned to abstraction when in Paris in the early fifties, citing particularly the influence of Nicolas de Stael’s abstract paintings with their flat, but richly textured areas of color. He soon developed his own painting process, employing the push broom to create wide strokes of paint that swept across his canvas surfaces. Continue reading Ed Clark
