About Al Held
Al Held was an American Abstract expressionist painter. He was particularly well known for his large scale Hard-edge paintings. As an artist, multiple stylistic changes occurred throughout his career, however, none of these occurred at the same time as any popular emerging style or acted against a particular art form. In the 1950s his style reflected the abstract expressionist tone and then transitioned to a geometric style in the 1960s. During the 1980s, there was a shift into painting that emphasized bright geometric space the deepness of which reflected infinity. From 1963 to 1980 he was a professor of art at Yale University. In 1964, Held was awarded the Logan Medal of the Arts and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966. He originally thought about studying in Mexico under the prominent muralist David Siqueiros, who created gigantic pieces that contained intense political material. The Galerie Huit in Paris was where his first exhibition was set up in 1952.
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