Shaped Canvas - More Recent Shaped Canvas Art

More Recent Shaped Canvas Art

Among shaped-canvas artists of more recent generations, Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007) produced playfully "exploding" canvases, in which exuberance of shape and color seems to force itself outside the normative rectangle - or, as a 1981 New York Times review put it: "...the inner shapes blast off from their moorings and cause the whole painting to fly apart."

Singapore's Anthony Poon (1945–2006) continued the tradition of cool, abstract, minimalist geometry associated with the shaped canvas in the 1960s. The analytical poise and undulating repetitions in his work somewhat recall the work of modular constructivist sculptors such as Erwin Hauer and Norman Carlberg.

The globetrotting Filipina artist Pacita Abad (1946–2004) stuffed and stitched her painted canvases for a three-dimensional effect, combining this technique (which she called trapunto, after a kind of quilting technique) with free-wheeling mixed media effects, riotous color, and abstract patterning suggestive of festive homemade textiles, or of party trappings such as streamers, balloons, or confetti. The total effect is joyously extrovert and warm - quite opposed to both the minimalist and pop art versions of "cool".

In reference to the shaped paintings of Jack Reilly (born 1950), Robin Landa emphasizes the power of the shaped canvas to create a sensation of movement: "Many contemporary artists feel that the arena of painting can be greatly extended by the use of shaped canvases. Movement is established in the container (canvas) itself as well as in the internal space of the container." A 1981 review in Artweek stated "These intricately constructed pieces are related to wall sculpture, bridging the gap between painting and sculpture, they have an illusionary sculptural presence." An additional function of the shaped canvas in Reilly's earlier work was to emphasize the ambiguity of pictorial space in abstract art.