Lyrical Abstraction

リリカル・アブストラクション / 1947–1970s / Style / Postwar Abstract Painting

Abstraction that leans neither on geometric discipline nor on violent gesture, assembling a lyric out of flowing strokes and bleeding colour. The name was born in Paris and was later applied in America to thinly painted, stained canvases. A reference point whenever softness and lightness have to be designed.

Lyrical Abstraction — Karel Appel, Leap into Space, 1953 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · © Pedro Ribeiro Simões from Lisboa, Portugal — Karel Appel, Leap into Space, 1953 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · CC BY 2.0 · © Pedro Ribeiro Simões from Lisboa, Portugal

Lyrical Abstraction — Michel Carrade, watercolour on paper, 1951 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Caillouriant — Michel Carrade, watercolour on paper, 1951 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Caillouriant

At a glance

Visual cues

Flowing brushwork
Layers of bleed and overlap
Light, transparent colour
Composition without a centre

Best used for

Covers for healthcare, poetry or chamber music where the mark stays handmade yet weightless
Large washes for packaging and interiors that avoid both the corporate gradient and the heavy painterly cliche

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Dictionary entry

Type: A light-weight seriffed face set small at one corner, never crossing the centre of the wash.
Composition: An all-over, centreless field running past all four edges, offering the eye no anchor and no focal incident.
Material: Thinned colour on an absorbent ground, so the pigment spreads and the edge is decided by the substrate rather than by the hand.
Caution: Adding colours muddies the layers and loses the transparency, and one confident stroke in the middle turns the field into a logo, destroying the drift the style is made of.
Further study: The difference between the Paris usage and the American one / The staining technique / The exhibitions around 1970

Related entries

Art Informel (アンフォルメル)Same Postwar Abstract Painting lineage.Compare Lyrical Abstraction and Art Informel
Color Field Painting (カラーフィールド・ペインティング)Same Postwar Abstract Painting lineage.Compare Lyrical Abstraction and Color Field Painting

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