Contemporary Color Fields

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The mid-century colour-field painters showed that a canvas covered in a few expanses of hue could be enough. Artists now extend that lesson. Some reduce it further: Alan Charlton has painted only grey monochromes, built to precise units, since the early 1970s, and Peter Tollens lays down many thin coats until a single colour gains depth.

Others leave the canvas behind. Katharina Grosse sprays acrylic across walls, floors, soil and found objects, so that a whole room becomes a field. Casper Brindle, influenced by California's Light and Space movement, uses resin, glass and polished surfaces so that colour seems to float and shift as the viewer moves. Jonny Niesche pairs gradient fabrics with reflective panels. An earlier example explains much of the effect: Josef Albers's Homage to the Square series, begun in 1950, showed how neighbouring colours alter one another. Look for scale, edges, surface and changes in light.