CategoriesMedium and Techniques
Gestural
Painting in which the movement of the artist's arm and brush stays visible, in sweeps, slashes, drips and smears of paint.
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About
Gestural painting keeps the movement of the artist's body visible in the finished work: the sweep of an arm, the drag of a loaded brush, a flick, smear or spatter. Speed and pressure become part of the subject.
Old Masters opened the way. Late in life Titian reportedly worked paint with his fingers, and Frans Hals built lace and laughter from a few slashing strokes. Jean-Honoré Fragonard dashed off his so-called fantasy figures around 1769. After 1945 gesture moved to the core of abstraction on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. Franz Kline enlarged quick sketches into black bars on white, Elaine de Kooning painted restless portraits, and Hans Hartung and Georges Mathieu made calligraphic abstractions in Paris. In Japan the Gutai artist Kazuo Shiraga painted with his feet while hanging from a rope. Look for directional strokes, thick ridges, drips and places where the brush ran dry.
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