American and Canadian artists of the 1960s and '70s changed the feel and appearance of abstract painting. They soaked pigment directly into the canvas, which enabled them to move beyond the thickly painted and dramatically brushed work of the previous generation. What resulted are two kinds of pictures: some with flowing, liquid colours and others with crisp, linear designs. Both types of painting are big and flat, and they seem to expand and contract optically with their active, vibrating surfaces.

All of the artists on display — Frank Stella, Jack Bush, Gene Davis, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Campbell Lochead and Kenneth Clifton Noland — were exhibited at the AGO in a groundbreaking show curated by the influential American art critic Clement Greenberg in 1964 entitled Post-Painterly Abstraction.

Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario.