Paul Reed: A Retrospective

About the Exhibition

A painter of formal rigor and bold experimentation, Paul Reed (1919-2015) was a seminal member of the Washington Color School, a group of cutting-edge abstract artists working in Washington, DC, during the 1960s. Reed was a gifted artist, teacher, and a major contributor to the golden age of modern painting in the nation's capital. His works are dynamic and colorful explorations of paint's fundamental possibilities.

This major retrospective, the first devoted to the artist, presents a survey of Reed’s art and accomplishments from his early days as a graphic designer in 1950s New York to his success as one of the founding artists of the Washington Color School in the 1960s to the aesthetic reinventions of his later work. Reed’s life was devoted to art and endless exploration of the many and varied properties of and approaches to form, color, and light. Throughout his career spanning six decades, Reed worked in a wide variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, collage, graphic design, and computer-generated and enhanced imagery. His lifetime achievement as an artist, prolific production, and the variety of materials, techniques, and strategies explored in his art rank him as one of America’s most significant painters active in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Paul Reed: A Retrospective is organized by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and curated by David Gariff, PhD.

Admission: free