D-C

American artist Al Held had his first solo exhibition as an Abstract Expressionist painter in 1952 at Gallery Eight in Paris. Known especially for hard-edge painting, in the 1960s Held was a leading exponent of the trend known as Post-Painterly Abstraction. After a period beginning in 1967 in which he painted mainly in black and white, he returned to the use of color in the late 1970s. Held was awarded a Logan Medal of the Arts (1964) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1966).