Untitled (black grid) from the portfolio Ten Works x Ten Painters

Adolph P. Reinhardt

Published in the portfolio Ten Works x Ten Painters in an edition of 500. Included in the project were Ad Reinhardt, Ellsworth Kelly, Gene Davis, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Motherwell, George Ortman, Larry Poons, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. Publishing was overseen by Samuel Wagstaff, Jr.

Reinhardt's untitled screenprint of precisely gridded blacks is done after his Black Paintings, described by the Princeton University Art Museum's website as such:

"Reinhardt sought to fuse two of abstraction’s characteristic elements: the grid and the monochrome. The surface of this painting at first appears solid black, an uninterrupted field of color—or its absence— but a closer look reveals the canvas is in fact composed of a grid of nine squares. Each square possesses subtle tonal differences resulting from the artist’s addition of small amounts of red, green, or blue to black pigment. Reinhardt attempted to remove any trace of labor from his canvases that might cause visual distraction—a goal that, paradoxically, required great effort. "