Ad Reinhardt

Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt (December 24, 1913 – August 30, 1967) was an abstract painter responsive in New York for over three decades. He was a zealot of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and part of the hobby centered upon the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as abstract expressionism. He was next a enthusiast of The Club, the meeting place for the New York School abstract expressionist artists during the 1940s and 1950s. He wrote and lectured extensively upon art and was a major influence on conceptual art, minimal art and monochrome painting. Most well-known for his "black" or "ultimate" paintings, he claimed to be painting the "last paintings" that anyone can paint. He believed in a philosophy of art he called Art-as-Art and used his writing and satirical cartoons to campaigner for abstract art and adjacent to what he described as "the disreputable practices of artists-as-artists".