Ed Clark used abstraction and a unique eye for vibrant color to illuminate new possibilities in New York School painting. Though his position as a staunch abstractionist may have initially afforded him fewer opportunities in a world that sought to position African American artists as overtly figurative and political, in recent years art historians and critics have come to recognize Clark as deserving of the highest praises. In 2014, critic Barry Schwabsky wrote in a review for the Nation, “[Clark] is, simply, one of the best living painters.” And in the New York Times, Roberta Smith has described his painting as “effortless, thrilling abstraction full of floating light.” That sense of float, light, and virtuosity was born of a life of travel and artistic exchange with figures like Nicolas de Staël, Beauford Delaney, Joan Mitchell, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, to name just a few.

It was in Montparnasse, Paris, under a fourth-floor studio skylight, that Clark developed his signature push-broom technique. Dissatisfied with the wavering gestures of a hand brush, he used the broom to extend his reach and rush long, energetic strokes of paint horizontally across his canvases. Color mixed luminously and directly on the painting’s surface. This innovation coupled with the oval-shaped canvases of his later years – which Clark felt better matched the human field of vision – allowed Clark to achieve what art historian Darby English notes as a unique “dimensionality of color” that does away with “head-on representations of the world.”

Over a period of 25 years, Clark worked with the famed studio of Robert Blackburn to produce a number of intaglio and relief prints. Dolan/Maxwell is pleased to present ten of these works, dating from 1976 to 1997. Combining luscious color blends, etched horizontal lines, and the ellipse as a central motif, these works offer a fascinating and understudied account of how printmaking offered Clark a means to distill many of his paintings' key elements into discrete printerly moves.