Ed Clark
100 YEARS OF ED CLARK
Exhibition Dates: May 6 - June 27, 2026
Born in Storyville, Louisiana, on May 6, 1926, Ed Clark emerged as one of the most innovative voices in postwar American abstraction. 100 Years of Ed Clark celebrates the centennial of the artist’s birth, tracing the evolution of a remarkable career shaped by movement, color, and an unwavering commitment to artistic freedom.
Spanning six decades of work, the exhibition reflects Clark’s groundbreaking contributions to abstraction, from his pioneering use of the push broom to his innovative approach to the shaped canvases and his expansive fields of sweeping, luminous color. Together, the works illuminate an artist whose practice continually challenged the boundaries of painting while remaining unmistakably his own.
100 Years of Ed Clark traces the artist’s extraordinary journey across decades and continents, revealing how place, travel, and lived experience continually informed his approach to abstraction. From Paris to Morocco, Bahia to Taos, Clark absorbed the light, color, landscape, and energy of the places he encountered, translating them into a visual language entirely his own.
Moving through the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s, the exhibition offers a view into the evolution of Clark’s practice and the experiences that shaped one of the most distinctive careers in American abstraction.
Paris proved transformative for Clark. Immersed in the artistic freedom of postwar Paris, he developed a practice increasingly liberated from conventional approaches to painting. In 1956, Clark created an early shaped canvas, extending the painted surface beyond the traditional rectangular frame and further challenging established boundaries between painting, form, and space.
photo courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago
Clark transformed the possibilities of the painted gesture through his innovative use of the push broom. Sweeping pigment across the canvas with force and immediacy, he created broad, dynamic passages of color that became a defining element of his visual language. The unconventional tool allowed Clark to move beyond the scale of the traditional brush and approach painting with a physical freedom uniquely his own.
Travel remained central to Clark’s artistic life. Paris, Morocco, Bahia, and Taos offered distinct experiences of atmosphere, landscape, and light that found their way into his paintings. Rather than depicting these places literally, Clark translated their sensations into color, gesture, movement, and space.
For Ed Clark, abstraction was a space of possibility. Across a career spanning more than six decades, he remained committed to discovery and continually pushing painting beyond its expected boundaries.
100 Years of Ed Clark honors not only the work he created, but the freedom with which he created it. A century after his birth, Clark’s paintings remain as immediate, expansive, and alive as the artist who made them.
