'Ad REINHARDT, one of the pioneer American abstractionists, painted in geometric, rectangular style since the late 1930's.He was one of the most brilliant and individual minds among post-war avante-garde American painters, a superb caricaturist and a student of Oriental art. After abstract experiments in the1940's, with Mondrian geometry alternating with more freely composed allover patterns, in the early 1950's he began to simplify his palette to a single colour. The first group of such paintings was in red, the next in blue, and the final group, on which he worked for the rest of his life, in black. One first observes these later paintings simply as a unitary field of red, blue, or black. With time, there begins to emerge a second, inner image- smaller rectangle, square, or a central cross consisting of a slightly different value or tone of the colour (see picture). His stated purpose was always elimination of all-associations, all extraneous elements, the refinement of paintings to a single dominant experience. There is no question that these later works were powerful visual, expressionists images, hypnotic in their effect. During the 1970's REINHARDT's work continues to have a significant influence on the newpost-minimal painters and sculptors, while the artist himself has become something of a cult figure among the conceptualists partly as a result of his writings and his extreme positions on the nature and function of the artist.' Taken from 'A History of Modern Art, by H H Arnason, published by Thames & Hudson, pages 534 & 5 - colour plate page 218.