Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still was among the first and most fiercely independent pioneers of Abstract Expressionism, developing non-representational painting in the late 1930s before Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Rejecting European artistic traditions, Still created vast vertical expanses of heavily troweled, impasto pigment cleaved by jagged, flame-like vertical chasms.

Fiercely protective of his moral and creative independence, Still severed ties with the commercial art market in the 1950s, refusing to sell to major dealers and living in seclusion in rural Maryland. He willed his immense estate of over 3,000 works to an American city willing to build a permanent museum dedicated exclusively to his vision, realized by Denver in 2011.