Paul Reed American, 1919-2015

Interchange X presents a strident scheme of primary and secondary colors arranged within a clean geometric plane. This piece was painted shortly after his first solo exhibition at Adams Morgan Gallery in 1963, when Reed’s compositions started to mature quickly, working in a bold pallete and juxtaposing strong, linear compositions in carefully chosen colors.

Reed’s early work—created using acrylic on unprimed canvas—was highly methodical and characterized by a centralized image, such as the strong horizontal lines cutting through the center of the composition on this piece. Working sequentially, his compositions increased in complexity as he refined the central idea of his series. Following the Disk series, Reed further explored the mechanics of geometry and overlapping color in later groups entitled Upstart, Inside Out, and Coherence. He and Morris Louis are remembered as the two most successful artists able to fully employ the transparency of modern acrylic paint. Later working with shaped canvases in his series Emerging, Topeka, Hackensack, and Zig-Fields, Reed systematically increased the complexity of color relationships within his works, feeling as though he had exhausted the color possibilities available to him within each of his previous forms.