Taxi Cab III
Al Held American
Not on view
In 1959 the painter Sam Francis (1923–1994), whom Held had met in the early 1950s while studying on the G. I. Bill in Paris, lent him his spacious, well-lit New York studio for six months. There Held created six monumental "Taxi Cab" paintings, of which this is the largest. To keep the studio clean, Held unrolled large sections of photographers’ backdrop paper. He eventually adopted the paper as a support, realizing his dynamic gestural style in unmixed color—newly developed Liquitex acrylic paints. Spanning thirty-one feet, the geometric forms of Taxi Cab III tumble, collide, and overlap, like jazzy abstract analogs for the careening traffic and cacophonous soundtrack of Held’s native city.
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