Background

Edward Clark was born on May 6, 1926, in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. When he was six, his parents Merion (Hutchinson) Clark and Edward Clark Sr., moved their family to Baton Rouge, where they lived in a shotgun house with Ed's father's great aunt. Later, the family settled down in Chicago.

Education

During the time, when Clark's family lived in Baton Rouge, Edward began his elementary schooling. It was there, that he was first exposed to drawing. On one occasion, a nun at his Catholic school issued a challenge to Clark and his classmates - whoever could produce the best tree drawing would receive a gold star. Taking up the challenge, Clark won acknowledgment from his teachers for his artistic abilities, as well as the gold star, and this experience awakened the desire to become an artist in Clark.

After two years of studying at Catholic school, Edward, together with his family, relocated north to Chicago. In 1943, at the age of 17, he left high school and enlisted in the air force during the height of World War II. Edward was stationed for two years in the South Pacific and returned to Chicago upon his release.

Later, in 1947, with the help of the G.I. Bill (a law, that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans), Clark entered the Art Institute of Chicago, where Louis Ritman and Helen Gardner were his mentors. In 1951, Clark left the institute and the following year, in 1952, he moved to Paris.

During his time in Paris, Clark attended the prestigious Académie de la Grande Chaumière until 1953 and studied under the guidance of Edouard Goerg and Ossip Zadkine. Clark appreciated the relaxed workshop environment of the Chaumiere - in comparison to what he viewed as the formal and often stifling approach of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Career

After leaving the Art Institute of Chicago in 1952, Edward settled down in Paris. As for an African-American, this period abroad was pivotal for his development, because it allowed for opportunities and experiences, that segregation made unavailable to him in the United States. During his time in Paris, Clark was exposed to a multitude of artists and movements, including the CoBrA group (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) and the gestural abstraction of Art Informel. It's also worth noting, that, in Paris, he was especially influenced by the abstractions and thickly impastoed canvases of Russian-born artist Nicolas de Stael, particularly his painting, titled "The Footballers". Moreover, From de Stael, Clark adopted the application of bright colors in densely packed, block-like forms. The resulting works were characterized by forms, that seem to be arranged so as to echo one another.

In 1953, Clark's financial support from the G.I. Bill (a low, from which he benefited in order to enter the prestigious educational establishments, such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris) ended. However, he decided to stay in Paris, rather than return to the United States, despite the likelihood of financial hardship. While in Paris, he shared studio space and also lived intermittently with several other American expatriate artists, including Herbert Gentry and Joan Mitchell. Paris, for Clark, represented a space of social and artistic freedom, that was unattainable in the United States, where racism abounded and black art and artists were primarily confined to exhibiting their works in libraries and community centers - spaces, that were inferior to the mainstream art galleries.

In Paris, Clark not only embraced abstraction, but also began painting on a monumental scale. After experiencing difficulties in finding paintbrushes, that could accommodate his work, he created the so-called "push-broom technique", in which he repurposed a janitor's push broom as a paintbrush, which allowed him to paint large surfaces easily. Edward would lay his canvas on the floor and spontaneously pour paint onto it. He would then perform what he termed "the big sweep", which involved him pushing the broom in an accelerated manner, that would create bold, broad strokes, while adding a sense of speedy and dynamic action to his gestures. These works are characterized by large spaces, dominated by a few colors (usually three distinct hues), that are rendered in an all-over manner. Also, these works remind of those, created by Mark Rothko and Franz Kline.

While in France, Edward received critical acclaim and was lauded by Michel Concil-Lecoste, a critic at the journal Le Monde. In 1953, critic and curator Michel Tapie included Clark in an exhibition of American artists, living in France, making Clark the only African-American to be included in the exhibition, which was held at the Galerie Craven. Moreover, Clark's works were also presented at a number of major Parisian galleries, which included Galerie Creuze, Galerie Maeght and Galerie Huit. In 1957, Clark was included in Michel Seuphor's 1957 publication, titled "Dictionnaire de la Peinture Abstraite".

In 1957, Edward came back to his native country, the United States, and settled down in New York City. It was there, in New York City, that the artist became a charter member of the Brata Gallery - a small art cooperative.

After his return to the United States, Edward began experimenting with "shaped" paintings. This turn to "shaped" paintings was due to the artist's financial problems. He also started to paint on paper with the intention to return to the canvas, when he was more financially secure. However, after Ed's return to canvas, he added paper to the surface of a canvas in a way, that caused it to stretch over the side of the canvas and hang limp. Then, Clark created an armature under the paper as a support. Later, Clark's "shapes" became painting and collage, as well as sculpture.

In 1966, Edward came back to Paris, where he lived till 1969. Also, it was in 1966, that he held a personal exhibition at Galerie Creuze. During this period of time, Clark started to make oval-shaped paintings, which he saw as a continuation of his experiments with shape. By moving toward a more circular form, he sought to incorporate perception by mimicking the shape of the eye. In the 1970's, Clark further developed this concept with the creation of elliptical-shaped works.

In the 1970's, Edward began to travel around the world. He visited Greece, Nigeria, Mexico, Brazil and China and incorporated the colors and experiences of journeys into his paintings. Besides the shifts in his color palette during his career, the artist experimented with line and form as well.

In the 1980's, the artist replaced his three-unit Color Fields with tubular forms, which are curved and multi-directional - a contrast to the static Color Fields of the 1950's. Edward's work from the 1990's and the 2000's was characterized by vertical strokes, combined with floating masses of color, that merged with one another across the picture plane, resulting in monumental abstract compositions, that reflected Clark's entire career of experimentation with color, form and line.

Later, Edward lived in New York City and often visited Paris. During the last years of his life, he resided in Detroit. He painted well into his later years, stopping only when his strength began to fail.

During his career, besides the exhibitions, mentioned above, Ed had numerous other solo exhibitions, including those, held at the American Embassy, Paris, France (1969), Donald Judd's Loft, New York City (1971, Citicorp Center, New York City (1981), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (2013), Pace Gallery, London (2017), among others.

Achievements

• Edward Clark was best known for his "push-broom technique", in which he used a household broom, occasionally guided by wooden tracks, to cover a canvas in sweeping strokes of color. He has also been credited as one of the first artists to use shaped canvases.
  
  Edward was known for his powerful brushstroke, large-scale canvases, and especially, his use of color. In addition, Clark was the only African-American to be included in the exhibition, held at the Galerie Craven in Paris in 1953.
  
  Edward's most important works, that both overview the major creative periods and highlight the greatest achievements by the artist, include "The City" (1952), "Untitled" (1955), "Untitled" (1957), "Big Egg" (1968), "Untitled: Paris Series 1988" (1988) and "Pink Wave" (2006).
  
  Clark won multiple awards, including the Art Institute of Chicago’s Legends and Legacy Award (2013), Rush Philanthropic Arts’ Art for Life Honored Artist Award (2000), the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Painters and Sculptors Grant (1998), the United States Congressional Achievement Award (1994), the National Endowment for the Arts’ Master Award (1972) and Musée des Arts Decoratifs’ Prix d’Othon Friesz (1955).
  
  In addition to his many other accomplishments, Clark also appears in the Melvin van Peebles film "The Story of a Three-Day Pass" (1967) and painted a mural inside the plane of the late Reginald Lewis, a multi-millionaire and owner of Beatrice Foods, a snack food and grocery store conglomerate.
  
  The artist's works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Studio Museum in New York City, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Museum of Modern Art in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, among others.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Untitled

  • Blue & Red

  • The City

  • Paris Gothic

  • Self Portrait

  • Paris

  • Portrait of Nicole

  • Creation

  • Untitled

  • Pink Wave

  • The Circle (Vétheuil Series)

  • Erotica

  • Louisiana Red

  • Jumaane’s Choice

  • Big Egg

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled (New York Series)

  • Untitled

Views

To create his works, Edward used a push broom and bold colors to allude to the natural world and at times to convey emotions about racial injustice. He said he hit on this way of working, when he was a young artist, living hand-to-mouth in Paris, and, in search of something wider than a painter’s brush, picked up a janitor’s boom. He used it to push thick piles of paint across the canvas, lying on the floor, and it eventually became his preferred tool.

Ed's primary interests were in the materiality of paint, sense of speed and monumentality, that the sweep of the broom imparted to his abstractions.

Like many artists of his generation, Clark spoke admiringly of the work of Monet and Matisse, but he cited the galvanizing influence of his first encounter in Paris in 1952 with the slab-like paint surfaces of the French Russian-born painter Nicolas de Staël.

Quotations: "Art is not subject to political games, its importance elevates it above any racial difference. All men of talent, of noble spirit, can make it."

"I'm still trying to paint that painting...I'm never satisfied with my paintings - but I'm less satisfied with everybody else."

"I'm a sum total of my experiences at this point. My art would look different now if I hadn't gone to Paris. I'm not saying this is good or bad. But it would be different. The experience of Paris is still with me."

"Paris was the freest of cities and a true magnet for artists. We would meet among artists of all countries, with no distinction of class, race or political ideology. We were artists, nothing else."

"All great artists can only do what they esteem to be right. No matter how it appears at first, it will always be beautiful."

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "He (Edward Clark) is, simply, one of the best living painters. Paint as a literal, physical presence and as a trace of the artist's mental and physical activity becomes inseparable from the evocation of the glory of light." - Barry Schwabsky, an American art critic, art historian and poet

Connections

Clark's four marriages - to Muriel Nelson, Lola Owens, Hedy Durham and Liping An - ended in divorce. Melanca Clark is Ed's daughter.

Father:

Edward Clark Sr.

Mother:

Merion (Hutchinson) Clark

child:

Melanca Clark

Melanca Clark is president and CEO of Hudson-Webber Foundation, a private foundation, dedicated to improving quality of life in Detroit.

ex-wife:

Muriel Nelson

ex-wife:

Lola Owens

ex-wife:

Hedy Durham

ex-wife:

Liping An

Influence:

Nicolas de Staël

Influence:

Jackson Pollock

Influence:

Mark Henry

Influence:

Willem de Kooning

Influence:

Helen Frankenthaler

mentor:

Louis Ritman

mentor:

Helen Gardner

mentor:

Edouard Goerg

mentor:

Ossip Zadkine

References

• Ed Clark: Le Mouvement: The Retrospective
  2013