New contemporary American abstract artists

New abstract art

Josh Smith

While hardly a new name in abstract art, Josh Smith's vibrant works just keep getting better; he's also one of relatively few newer American artists working with more gestural forms of abstraction.

Born in 1976, Smith began to attract serious attention following a series of well received shows in the early noughties.

Many of his earliest works feature his own name integrated into the composition in order to explore ideas regarding authorship, but later paintings and collages veer between semi-figuration and complete abstraction.

A major influence on Smith's practice is his training in printmaking, a background which informs both the conceptual and formal aspects of his production.

His methodology, for example, consists of systematic processes, replication and serial repetition, while semi-transparent paint is often applied on top of more opaque colour in an emulation of the technique of over-printing.