Ad Reinhardt

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) was an American abstract painter whose career and influence spanned over three decades. Born Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt in Buffalo, New York, he moved to New York City at a young age, where he was exposed to the burgeoning modern art scene. Reinhardt studied art history at Columbia University, graduating in 1935, and continued his education at the American Artists School and the National Academy of Design.

Cubism, Constructivism and the compositions of de Stijl co-founder Piet Mondrian formed Ad Reinhardt’s aesthetic and conceptual basis. Reinhardt worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project between 1936 and 1940, through which he met key figures of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Reinhardt also became a member of the American Abstract Artists group, and alongside Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko was influenced by the same rising movement away from figuration.

Throughout the 1940s, Reinhardt developed his style from irregular lines and field of colour to the more uniform bricks of colour that began to emerge around 1950. In a subtler, quieter way than the action-obsessed Abstract Expressionist painters, Reinhardt’s paintings were more in line with Barnett Newman’s, and both artists worked within the concept of single image, rather than all over painting in which the artwork was focused on one, pure, aesthetic act.

Reinhardt sought an art in which no illusion, texture, or evidence of the artist’s personality could detract from the beauty and constructive purity of the picture itself. As Reinhardt once said, ‘Art is art. Everything else is everything else.’ In many ways, he can be understood as anticipating the later developments of Minimalism and Conceptualism. He sought to strip art of any narrative or emotional content, aiming instead for pure abstraction and formal perfection.

Reinhardt’s most notable trope throughout his work is this search for equilibrium of value of the colour. By continuing to further limit his palette from, first, varying tones of similar temperatures of colour, to eventually focusing on a single colour at a time it resulted in his becoming closer and closer to this sought-after equanimity. Each of his signature colour palettes, most notably blue, black and red, possess their own unique personality but still convey his deep respect for all colours being equal despite differences. Reinhardt’s Abstract Painting, Red (1953), which was sold at Christie’s in 2013 for US$2,741,000, epitomises the artist’s nuanced treatment of colours.

Reinhardt was also a prolific writer and educator, contributing essays and lectures on art theory. He died from a heart attack in 1967.