Postwar Abstraction highlights a period of remarkable creativity when ideas of abstraction and the nature and limits of artistic mediums were being contested by artists. Associated with movements as diverse as Abstract Expressionism, the Bay Area Figurative School, Color Field painting, Hard-Edge painting, Op Art, and Minimalism, artists continually sought to redefine what painting was and what it could be in the postwar period. The variety of works in these galleries ranges across a spectrum of styles, from expressive and gestural to austere and mechanical. However, all of these works share a commitment to abstraction. Together, the variety of techniques and styles of abstraction on view constitute one of the most diverse and creative periods in American art.
Image Credit: Willem de Looper, Untitled, ca. 1967, acrylic on canvas, 67 3/4 × 59 1/4 × 1 1/4 in., Oklahoma City Museum of Art, gift of The Frauke and Willem de Looper Foundation for the Arts, 2022.021, © de Looper Foundation, photo © Oklahoma City Museum of Ar
