Ed Clark: The Big Sweep

From September 7 through October 21, 2023, two full floors of Hauser & Wirth’s 22nd Street location in New York will celebrate the life and work of prolific American abstractionist Ed Clark (1926–2019). The exhibition, titled The Big Sweep,—named for the artist’s revolutionary use of the push broom as paintbrush—examines how Clark worked at the frontiers of abstract expressionism, experimenting with materiality and scale.

The earliest work on view is an untitled piece from 1955 which Clark completed while living in Paris, not long after he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. This large-scale oil on canvas spans 51 by 51 inches, blending color, form, and movement to showcase a captivating geometry. The work is emblematic of the artist’s early practice of honoring his contemporaries while finding a voice entirely his own. In 1950s Europe, Clark stated he felt free from the bigotry that confined Black artists in the US. At the time, intuitively, he began to pivot toward the abstraction that so intrigued him. The paint itself takes on a kinetic role in Clark’s work, which the artist attributed to his sweeping, bold strokes. “The paint is the subject,” he once explained.

The public will note the evolution of Clark’s artistry in Locomotion (1963); the artist has used a push broom to paint a shaped canvas. Clark first experimented with this technique in Paris in 1956, leveraging his entire body to create a sense of momentum. The work is vast and compelling, immense in scale, and covered in a blend of warm and cool colors—an array of near-gestural lines and textures that bring the painting to life, with subtle splatters over parts of the canvas. Viewers will take in the perpendicular lines and swift-moving shapes of varying intensity, together with the deep blues and teals alongside vivid oranges and pastel pinks. Locomotion is a dialogue across the entire surface of the work—and it’s no wonder, as Clark laid this canvas on the floor and applied pigment with a broom. It was, quite literally, a full-body experience.

Much of Clark’s pioneering status can be attributed to his experiences in Europe. While living and working in Paris, Clark paid close attention to modernists like Jean-Paul Riopelle, Pierre Soulages, and Nicolas de Staël, at the same time connecting with American expats such as Richard Wright, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and James Baldwin. In 1957, Clark settled in New York, where he played an integral role in the city’s downtown arts scene, eventually co-founding the artist-run Brata Gallery. His work continued to evolve from the late 1960s, a period during which Clark once again divided his time between the US and France—also traveling to destinations like Mexico and Brazil as well as Greece and North Africa.

The artist’s experiences abroad inspired him, as is apparent in an untitled acrylic work on shaped canvas from ca. 1970, which Clark painted not long after he spent a year living at Joan Mitchell’s studio in Vétheuil, France. The massive work represents his first oval canvas, designed to resemble a human eye and completed with the artist’s signature push broom methodology. There’s a newfound intensity in this piece, with its parallel lines creating a horizon-like composition—complete with a vibrant blue background, a sand-hued middle-ground, and a foreground of pink striations with hints of aqua blue and green.

Los Angeles-based gallerist Alitash Kebede calls Clark a free spirit and a master of color. “I think [Clark’s] subconscious knows what it’s doing,” she explains. “To create art, you have to be in another zone—and Ed works totally from the heart.” And while the artist’s work evolved significantly over the course of his seven-decade career, experimentation, materiality, and abstraction were long focal points. Clark continually defied tradition, escaping the neat boxes of gestural painting and conventional abstraction, instead crafting his own form of expressionism. It is the artist’s legacy.