Reinhardt, Ad(olf Frederick)

(born Dec. 24, 1913, Buffalo, N.Y., U.S.—died Aug. 30, 1967, New York, N.Y.) U.S. painter. He studied art after graduating from Columbia University. He employed several abstract styles in the 1930s and '40s, but by the early 1950s he had restricted his works to monochrome paintings incorporating symmetrically placed squares and oblong shapes against backgrounds of similar colour, in which drawing, line, brushwork, texture, light, and most other visual elements were suppressed. He explained his style as a conscious search for an art that would be entirely separate from life. He influenced the Minimalist movement of the 1960s, more as a polemicist than as a painter.

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