Hard-Edge Painting

Hard-Edge Painting.
A type of abstract painting in which forms, although not necessarily geometrical, have sharp contours and are executed in flat colours. It was one of the types of painting that developed as a reaction against the spontaneity and painterly handling of Abstract Expressionism (see Post-Painterly Abstraction). Major exponents have included Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Noland. The term was coined by the American critic Jules Langsner in 1958.