Ed Clark was an important voice in postwar abstraction whose career bridged Paris and New York. In the early 1950s, he joined the vibrant postwar art community in Paris, studying at L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière and finding an artistic freedom unavailable to him in the United States. Upon returning to New York, Clark became a founding member of the Brata Gallery, an influential artist-run space central to the development of Abstract Expressionism. Throughout his career, Clark explored the expressive potential of color, drawing inspiration from the light and atmosphere of places including Paris, New York, Morocco, Mexico, and Brazil. 

The present work exemplifies Clark’s experimental and varied approach to process and material. Here, Clark applied acrylic paint with a brush and dry pigment directly with his hands embracing a tactile method he described as a personal breakthrough, encouraging spontaneity and transformation. 

Clark's career was consumed by his reinvention of abstraction. His most celebrated innovation came through his use of a push broom, a tool associated with janitorial, often Black labor, to apply and move paint across his canvases. This technique, which became known as "the big sweep," imbued his work with both physicality and improvisational poetry as the broom's broad strokes and soft-edged transitions produced subtle shifts in color. While Clark's large canvases commanded critical attention, his works on paper reveal an intimate side of his process, imbued with the immediacy of his focus on form and color. The present acrylic and dry pigment work provides a quintessential example of both hallmarks of his career.