Ed Clark was born in 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana and was raised in Chicago. At the dawn of World War II, seventeen year-old Clark left high school to join the Air Force; after spending two years stationed in Guam he returned to Chicago to attend art school.

During his development as an artist, Clark began experimenting with larger paintings reaching as high as twelve feet and as wide as fifteen feet. When he couldn’t find paintbrushes big enough to accommodate this new scale, he discovered an ingenuous new use for the push broom, which he calls “the big sweep.” The big sweep became his signature style. The two works in this collection are both dry pigment on paper where the artist used the palm of his hand to spread and manipulate the colors.

In 1957, after living in Paris for five years Clark moved to New York City to join the burgeoning contemporary art scene. During his first year there he created and exhibited America’s first documented “shaped canvas,” influencing modern art throughout the late 1950’s and 1960’s. That piece is now on permanent display at Art Institute of Chicago.

Now at the age of ninety, Ed Clark continues to paint in his New York City studio in Chelsea while spending his summers in Paris.

Distinguished by an exuberant use of color and powerful brushstrokes, "Pink Wave" exemplifies Ed Clark's expressive signature style. Clark developed a unique painting method in the 1950s that combines painterly, sculptural, and performative techniques to create energetic compositions filled with texture and movement.

Works appear in

Detroit Institute of Arts
The Art Institute of Chicago
The Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Centro de Arte Moderno in Guadalajara, Mexico
Museum Solidarity in Titagrad, Yugoslavia
the Museum of Modern Art in Salvador, Brazil