Barbara Rose, Karen Wilkin, David Ebony, and David Anfam, Larry Poons, New York, 2021, page 95
In the late 1970s, American artist Larry Poons underwent a dramatic transformation in his painting practice, producing some of the most visceral and physically charged works of his career. Departing fully from the crisp geometry and optical clarity of his earlier work, Poons embraced a raw, gestural abstraction rooted in process and materiality. His canvases from this period are characterized by thick layers of paint, drips, splashes, and accumulations of pigment. Working in large scale, often on unstretched canvas, Poons allowed gravity and physical movement to shape the final image, creating works that feel less like static compositions and more like records of an intense, performative encounter with paint. These late 70s paintings marked a bold rejection of formalist constraints and affirmed Poons’ place as a fiercely independent force in American abstraction, committed to the expressive and transformative possibilities of the medium.
