the purist

Clyfford Still sold approximately 81 works during his lifetime. He had only 15 exhibitions. But neither statistic is due to a lack of demand for the pioneering Abstract Expressionist painter’s bold and uncompromising work, nor to a dearth of output.

Still’s contemporaries celebrated his outsized, exuberant paintings vociferously. He had arrived at pure abstraction between 1938 and 1942, shedding figurative tendencies earlier than his colleagues (many of whom continued to paint in a figurative-surrealist style into the 1940s). The intense effect of Still’s abstract shift was perceived quickly and deeply by the art world’s leading players. Jackson Pollock, the popular face of Ab-Ex, said Still’s work made the rest of the New York School’s output look “academic.” Comparing Still’s 1946 show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery to other “early” Abstract Expressionist and Color Field shows (like his own and Mark Rothko’s), Robert Motherwell said Still’s was the most original, “a bolt out of the blue.” He added, “Most of us were still working through images…Still had none.” Clement Greenberg, Ab-Ex’s most attentive critic, wrote of Still’s shocking uniqueness in the seminal essay “American-Type Painting.” Greenberg said, “When I first saw a 1948 painting of Still’s…I was impressed as never before by how estranging and upsetting genuine originality in art can be.”

Of the incredibly limited amount of exhibitions Still allowed, most were highly notable. His big break was a