This book casts new light on mid-twentieth century Color Field painting from theperspective of the artists’ ambitions for the future of abstract painting.Color Field became a convenient, albeit imperfect term to describe paintings inwhich vast areas of color appear as the dominant force. Color Field was not an artmovement, rather it was a cohort of likeminded artists. While the American AbstractExpressionists cleared a path for this postwar generation to forge ahead with abstractpainting, their achievements naturally challenged artists such as Frank Bowling, PeterBradley, Jack Bush, Ed Clark, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, Adolph Gottlieb,Hans Hofmann, Morris Louis, Al Loving, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, JulesOlitski, Larry Poons, Frank Stella, and Alma Thomas, to create abstraction anew.Experimenting with non-traditional painting mediums and methods, as well as theseartists’ probing of the conventions of painting, led to unprecedented works