Washington Color School

A visual-art movement of the late 1950s through the late-1960s centered in Washington, D.C., the Washington Color School describes a form of abstract art that developed from color field painting, itself a form of abstract art that explored ways to use large solid areas of paint, as exemplified by the work of Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler. The Washington Color School originally consisted of a group of painters who showed works in an exhibit called the "Washington Color Painters" at the now-defunct Washington Gallery of Modern Art in Washington from June 25 to September 5, 1965. This exhibition, which subsequently traveled to several other venues in the United States, including the Walker Art Center, solidified Washington's place in the national movement and defined what is considered the city's signature art movement. The exhibition's organizer was Gerald "Gerry" Nordland and the painters included Gene Davis, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Howard Mehring, Hilda Thorpe, Thomas "Tom" Downing, and Paul Reed.

The Washington Color School artists painted largely abstract works, and were central to the larger color field movement. Though not generally considered abstract expressionists, insofar as much of their work is more orderly than—and not apparently motivated by—the philosophy behind—abstract expressionism, there are parallels between the Washington Color School and the abstract expressionists largely to their north in New York City. Minimally, the use of stripes, washes, and fields of single colors of paint on canvas were common to most artists in both groups.

...
Wikipedia