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Clyfford Still was an American painter. He was one of the most original and influential first-generation Abstract Expressionists, being often credited for having shifted from representational painting to abstraction earlier than his colleagues.
Still was born in 1904 in Grandin, North Dakota and spent his childhood in Spokane, Washington and Bow Island in southern Alberta, Canada. Although Abstract Expressionism is identified as a New York movement, Still’s formative works were created during various teaching posts on the West Coast. His work of this period is marked by an expressive figurative style used in depictions of the people, buildings, tools and machinery characteristic of farm life. By the late 1930s, he began to simplify his forms as he moved from representational painting toward abstraction. In 1941 Still relocated to the San Francisco Bay area where, following work in various war industries, he became a highly influential professor at the California School of Fine Arts, now known as the San Francisco Art Institute. He taught there from 1946-1950 – it was during this time when Still "broke through" to his mature style.
Still visited New York for extended stays in the late 1940s and became associated with two of the galleries that launched the new American art to the world — Peggy Guggenheim’s The Art of This Century Gallery and the Betty Parsons gallery. Rothko introduced him to Peggy Guggenheim, who gave him a solo exhibition at her Art of This Century gallery in early 1946. Later that year, the artist returned to San Francisco, where he taught for the next four years at the California School of Fine Arts. He lived in New York for most of the 1950s, the height of Abstract Expressionism, but also a time when he became increasingly critical of the art world. In the early 1950s, Still severed ties with commercial galleries and in 1961 moved to a farm near Westminster, Maryland, removing himself further from the art world. He remained in Maryland with his second wife, Patricia, until his death in 1980. Following his death, all works that had not entered the public domain were sealed off from both public and scholarly view, closing off access to one of the most significant American painters of the 20th century. Still received the Award of Merit for Painting in 1972 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, of which he became a member in 1978, and the Skowhegan Medal for Painting in 1975.
Still was also considered one of the foremost Color Field painters – his non-figurative paintings are non-objective, and largely concerned with juxtaposing different colors and surfaces in a variety of formations. Unlike Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman who organized their colors in a relatively simple way (Rothko in the form of nebulous rectangles, Newman in thin lines on vast fields of color), Still’s arrangements are less regular.
克萊福德·史帝是一位美國畫家。他是最具原創性和影響力的第一代抽象表現主義藝術家之一，通常被認為比他的同事早從代表性繪畫轉向抽象。
1904年出生於北達科他州格蘭丁，在加拿大艾伯塔南部的斯波坎，華盛頓和弓島度過童年。雖然抽象表現主義被確定為紐約運動，但Still的形成性作品是在西海岸的各種教學崗位上創作的。他在這個時期的作品的特點是具有鮮明的比喻風格，用於描繪農場生活中的人物，建築，工具和機械特徵。到了20世紀30年代末，當他從表現性繪畫轉向抽象時，他開始簡化形式。 1941年仍然搬遷到舊金山灣區，在各種軍事工業工作之後，他成為了加利福尼亞藝術學院（現稱為舊金山藝術學院）的一位極具影響力的教授。他從1946年到1950年期間在那裡教書 – 正是在這段時間裡，斯蒂爾突破了他的成熟風格。
仍然在20世紀40年代後期訪問紐約進行長期停留，並與兩個向全世界推出新美國藝術的畫廊 – 佩吉古根海姆的“本世紀藝術畫廊”和貝蒂帕森斯畫廊聯繫在一起。羅斯科向他介紹了佩吉古根海姆，後者於1946年初在她的“當代藝術”畫廊舉辦了一場個展。當年晚些時候，藝術家回到舊金山，在那裡他在加利福尼亞美術學院教授未來四年。他在紐約大部分時間居住在紐約，這是抽象表現主義的高潮，也是他越來越批評藝術世界的時候。在20世紀50年代初期，依然與商業畫廊斷絕關係，並於1961年搬到馬里蘭州威斯敏斯特附近的一個農場，從藝術世界進一步脫離自己。他與他的第二任妻子帕特里夏一直留在馬里蘭州，直到他於1980年去世。在他去世後，所有未進入公有領域的作品都被公開和學術觀點所封閉，從而關閉了最重要的美國人之一20世紀的畫家。 1972年還獲得美國文學和藝術學院的繪畫優異獎，其中他於1978年成為會員，1975年獲得Skowhegan繪畫獎章。
仍然被認為是最重要的色域畫家之一 – 他的非具像畫作是非客觀的，主要關注將各種顏色和表面並置在各種編排中。不像Mark Rothko或Barnett Newman，他們以一種相對簡單的方式組織顏色（Rothko以模糊的矩形形式組織，Newman以巨大的顏色組成的細線），Still的配置不太規則。
Tuen Tony Kwok
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Clyfford Still 克萊福德·史帝 (1904-1980) Abstract Expressionism American
