Epic Abstraction

Al Held's monumental hard-edged geometric paintings from 1959–1965, tracing his break from gestural abstraction toward the Alphabet series.

Why go

This is Held's first solo Los Angeles presentation in five decades. The exhibition pairs his transitional Collage Paintings—which incorporate LIFE magazine imagery and mass-media fragments—with the monumental Alphabet works that define his mature practice, including Circle and Triangle (1964), a 12-by-28-foot four-panel canvas that toggles between

What to expect

Large-scale acrylic and mixed-media paintings on canvas, ranging from gestural collages to hard-edged geometric forms. Key works include two 1959 Untitled collages (roughly 100 by 94 inches each) and the monumental Circle and Triangle spanning four panels at 144 by 336 inches, alongside smaller works like The "N" (1963) and The Red X (1965).

Things to know

• First solo Los Angeles presentation of Held's work in five decades.
• Circle and Triangle (1964) reaches 12 feet high and spans 28 feet across four panels.
• Held switched from oil to acrylic paint in the early 1960s to achieve harder, cleaner edges and eliminate expressionist brushwork.
• Featured in Clement Greenberg's Post Painterly Abstraction at LACMA (1964) and the Whitney's Geometric Abstraction in America (1962).
• Held taught in Yale's graduate program from 1963–80 and worked until his death in 2005.
• The exhibition pairs gestural Collage Paintings (1959) incorporating mass-media fragments with the hard-edged Alphabet series (1961–1967).