Richard Pousette-Dart

The Magnificent

1950–1951

Tall red vertical figure-like shape with circular symbols amid dense colorful abstract marks.

Tall red vertical figure-like shape with circular symbols amid dense colorful abstract marks.

Not on view

Date
1950–1951

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Oil on canvas

Dimensions
Overall: 86 5/16 × 44 in. (219.2 × 111.8 cm)

Accession number
53.43

Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Ethel K. Schwabacher

Rights and reproductions
© The Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

API
artworks/2902

Audio

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Richard Pousette-Dart, The Magnificent, 1950–51

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Narrator: Richard Pousette-Dart was one of the first Abstract Expressionists to work on a monumental scale. With its intense colors and thick black contour lines, The Magnificent looks from a distance like a stained-glass window. But as one gets closer, the surface becomes the painting’s most insistent feature. It’s not only thick and richly textured, but multi-layered. Pousette-Dart began the work by inscribing graphic images on the canvas—the totemistic forms that interested many Abstract Expressionists through the 1940s. He then obscured these figures, moving towards abstraction but retaining a sense of cryptic, symbolic significance beneath the surface.

Richard Pousette-Dart, The Magnificent, 1950–51

In Signs & Symbols

Exhibitions

Richard Pousette-Dart
8 works in the collection, 26 exhibitions

View artist