Accompany Dean Sobel on his final trip through the galleries as Clyfford Still Museum Director, leading a virtual tour of The Late Works: Clyfford Still in Maryland, his last exhibition for the Clyfford Still Museum. The new exhibition investigates the artist’s later works, both in painting and in drawing, made after his move to rural Maryland in 1961.
This marked a particularly fertile period for Still; he made over 375 works on canvas and over 1,100 works on paper, nearly all in pastel, in Maryland before his death in 1980 at the age of 75. The exhibition includes approximately 40 paintings and 30 works on paper. Still’s art evolved in a number of significant ways in the early 1960s. Perhaps most notable was a general broadening of his palette and an increasing economy of imagery. Implied movement also became more vivid, as if his painted forms were being set in motion by invisible forces. Still also developed new processes, such as roller brushes, and formats during this period.
This exhibition also represents the culmination of a nearly 10-year inventory, research, and conservation project in which CSM unrolled, catalogued, and stretched many late works, most for the first time, so they could be studied and made accessible as part of this exhibition. The exhibition will remain on view until February 2021.