ED CLARK
SALON 94 presents an exhibition of Ed Clark, a pioneer of the New York School.
May 19 – 30, 2026
For seven decades, his experiments with pure color, abstract form, and the seductive materiality of paint have resulted in a body of work of remarkable originality, expanding the language of American abstraction. Many of Ed Clark's paintings were created using a broom, allowing him to paint quickly with broad brushstrokes, extending and accelerating the reach of his body. Clark's artistic advances occupy a significant place in the history of modern and contemporary art: in the late 1950s, he was the first American artist to exhibit a shaped canvas, an innovation that still resonates today. Challenging the traditional categories of gestural and contoured abstraction, Clark masterfully intertwined these approaches into a unique form of abstraction that was radically redefined in relation to expression and improvisation.
In 1943, Clark joined the United States Army Air Corps and served in Guam during World War II. Shortly after returning to the United States, Clark enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied painting as a veteran under the Veterans Readjustment Act (GI Bill). He continued his studies in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in 1952, where he remained even after his GI Bill expired, feeling it represented a society in which the color of his skin was less likely to determine his artistic career. Alongside a growing community of expatriate artists and writers, including fellow African American artists such as Beauford Delaney, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Barbara Chase-Riboud, Clark embraced Paris as the freest city and a true magnet for artists. “We met with artists from all countries, without distinction of class, race, or political ideology. We were artists, nothing more.” Similarly, Clark's luminous canvases unfold in an environment of absolute freedom, "passing through everything..." As early as the 1950s, Clark was exhibiting non-figurative painting, with a marked inclination toward raw, unpolished paint during his time in Paris, a tendency that would accompany him throughout the rest of his career.
In 1956, Clark moved to New York, where during the following decade he became part of the vibrant downtown art scene and was a founding member and exhibitor at the Brata Gallery, an artists' cooperative among the galleries on Tenth Street in the East Village. From the late 1960s onward, Clark divided his time between New York and Paris. His canvases from this period capture the light, energy, and unique palettes of these cities, developing a repertoire of gestures—musicality, speed, directionality—that he would use to reinvent abstraction throughout his career. Other notable series from his travels around the world include those of China, Egypt, Nigeria, Louisiana, Mexico, the Midi, Morocco, New Orleans, New York, Paris, and Yucatán. Following his time in Crete, where he met Jack Whitten, Clark Underwood felt that the color in his works was intrinsically linked to these places, often changing dramatically, unconsciously, from one location to another and from one series to another.