Al Held Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
American, 1928-2005
Alvin Jacob Held, (1928-2005) Al Held earned his slot in the annals of American contemporary art with his bold, geometric canvases that took abstraction to another level. His free-floating, interlocked cubes, and planes invited the viewer into a vertigo-inducing landscape that seemed to stretch on into infinity. "Immense architectural structures curve and slice through these complex paintings, often enmeshing themselves in cellular structures," noted the Times of London. "Viewers felt that they were exploring some mysterious universe, and Held never lost his passionate belief in abstract painting's ability to create a sublime new world."
Held grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and as a teenager, missed so many days of high school that it was suggested he consider leaving altogether. He eventually earned a night-school diploma, and spent two years in the U.S. Navy. Back in New York City, he enrolled in classes at the Art Students League, and went on to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris in the early 1950s. The first solo exhibition of his work was staged there, in 1952 at the Galerie Huit. Held's abstract work took on a more orderly, formal tone, aided by a switch from oil to acrylic paints in 1959, and he had his first solo show in New York City that same year at the Poindexter Gallery. "Finessing the gap between Minimalism and Color Field painting," wrote New York Times journalist Ken Johnson of the next decade of Held's career, "he produced smooth, simplified works based on enlarged letters of the alphabet. And in the late '60s and '70s he made complex black-and-white pictures of sharply outlined cubes, pyramids, and other geometric shapes floating in illusory spaces of indeterminate depth."
Some of Held's best-known works are those floating black and white cubes, a series he began in 1967. One of the largest, which stretches more than 90 feet in length, was installed at the Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York. In the late 1970s, in an abrupt shift, he began using color again, and the geometric shapes became so precise that they were sometimes mistaken for computer-generated art. Held considered his images not unlike those of religious art, once telling an interviewer that "historically, the priests and wise men believed that it was the artist's job to make images of heaven and hell believable, even though nobody had experienced these places," he said, according to his Chicago Tribune obituary.
Held spent 20 years teaching at Yale University's. Represented by the Robert Miller Gallery in New York City, which staged what would be his last exhibition of new work in 2003, Held's works were avidly sought by contemporary-art enthusiasts around the world, and were part of the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.
— Carol Brennan(Biography provided by Judy Ferrara Gallery)
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Artist: Al Held
Camerata XII
By Al Held
Located in Tbilisi, GE
Signed and dated - Watercolour on paper
Unique
Signed
Category
20th Century Contemporary Al Held Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Watercolor
PI-5
By Al Held
Located in New York, NY
Ink on paper
Category
1960s Al Held Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Ink
PI 49
By Al Held
Located in New York, NY
Signed and dated verso
Category
1960s Al Held Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
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Al Held drawings and watercolor paintings for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Al Held drawings and watercolor paintings available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Al Held in ink, paint, paper and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the contemporary style. Not every interior allows for large Al Held drawings and watercolor paintings, so small editions measuring 31 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Marc Swanson, Yuroz, and Jenny Brown.