Though Ed Clark is now acknowledged as a leading figure in the New York School of Abstraction in the 1950s, it wasn’t always the case. The contributions of the American artist, who was born in New Orleans and grew up in Chicago, were only recognised late in his career, and despite seven decades of work, this is also the first institutional exploration of the artist’s work to take place in Europe.

Clark trained at the Art Institute of Chicago, and then went to Paris, where he became influenced by the European modernists – the likes of Nicolas de Staël, Pierre Soulages, and Jean Riopelle. In Paris he also moved in a circle of prominent intellectuals and creatives, including Richard Wright and James Baldwin. When he returned to the US, settling in New York in 1957, he was embedded in the dynamic milieu of downtown, and over the next decade he became a generator of its liveliness, co-founding the co-op Brata Gallery on 10th Street in the East Village.

Clark’s innovations included being the first American artist to exhibit a shaped canvas, and adopting a push broom to apply pigment to his canvases – a technique that became known as a the ‘big sweep’ and allowed him to push paint with great force and astounding results. Some of these works, as well as Clark’s later experiments with new structures in compositions with sweeping rainbows, tubes, and waves of colour, will be included in this landmark exhibition at Turner Contemporary.