Draws from a new museum collection to trace seventy years of abstract painting in the United States. 

From the color field paintings of Helen Frankenthaler to the plate-paintings of Julian Schnabel, this catalog showcases an outstanding variety of postwar art in the United States. Featuring pieces from the Museum Reinhard Ernst in Wiesbaden, a new institution devoted to abstract art, the book charts the evolution of postwar abstraction, offering insight into influential figures as well as groups like the New York School and the Washington Color School.

More than one hundred color illustrations reproduce work by forty-five influential artists, including Josef Albers, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. Together, their works demonstrate the variety of aesthetics and approaches within abstraction—improvisational forms confront rigorous geometric compositions, pictures enter into dialogue with sculptural objects, and paint and color conjure the sublime.