Paul Reed

Paul Reed (1919-2015) was one of the important artists associated with the Washington Color School, the influential group of American abstract painters who transformed postwar painting in the nation's capital during the 1950s and 1960s. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Reed remained closely connected to his home city throughout his long life, and his work would eventually place him alongside Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, and Sam Gilliam as one of the defining figures of the movement.

Reed and his Washington colleagues became known for their abstract paintings, which they created by using the technique of soak-staining pigment directly into the canvas. This method differed dramatically from the thickly painted gestural strokes that had defined the New York School's action painting during the preceding decade. Working with thinned acrylic paint that was absorbed into the canvas itself, the Washington Color School artists emphasized the flatness of the image and focused their attention on color, structure, and design. This technique produced abstract fields and shapes of color that, for some artists, functioned as simplifications of forms drawn from nature. The resulting works possess a dynamic lyricism that lays full claim to the picture space.

Reed had his first solo exhibition at the Adams-Morgan Gallery in 1963, launching his career at a pivotal moment for the Washington Color School. He was one of six artists, alongside Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, to be included in the landmark 1965 exhibition The Washington Color Painters at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, an exhibition that gave the movement its name and established its place within the broader history of American abstract painting. Unlike the work of many of his fellow Washington artists, Reed's paintings of the 1970s took on a hard-edged geometric character, though he continued to build his forms using the staining techniques typical of Color Field practice. By the 1990s Reed had begun to incorporate more decorative elements into his geometric compositions, building up his surfaces with new textures and giving his pictures a stronger physical presence than his earlier stained fields had allowed.

Reed's works have been widely exhibited and are held in many important American museum collections. He continued to live and work in the Washington area until his death in 2015, remaining active in the artistic community he had helped to shape for more than half a century.