Charles Hinman Paintings

Charles Hinman Alizarin Orionids, 2003 Signed and dated lower right Watercolor on paper 12 x 12 inches Throughout his long career, Charles Hinman has collapsed the divide between p...

Charles Hinman Red Orionids, 2003 Signed and dated lower right Watercolor on paper 12 x 12 inches Charles Hinman’s paintings are explorations into the boundaries of abstraction through elaborate three-dimensional wood structures created with mathematical precision. Challenging his abstract expressionist predecessors, Hinman spearheaded the development of 1960s and 70s Abstract Minimal art by utilizing hard-edged canvases to move painting from a two-dimensional illusory space to a three-dimensional real space. What set Hinman apart from other contemporaries was his use of color, light, and time as his paintings reflect their hue onto the surrounding surface across varying levels of light. This juxtaposition places Hinman’s work at the intersection of the ideas explored by artists Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman, Al Loving, Dan Flavin, and James Turrell. The New American Abstraction 1950-1970, Claudine Humblet states about Hinman's work: "From the very beginning of Hinman's adventure of construction […] the aim of the first structures was to address the challenge of inertia and the force of gravity, sometimes connected with the interpretation of the aesthetics of "primary structures" (structures by Donald Judd, Soll LeWitt, Robert Morris, and Robert Smithson were included alongside shaped works by Hinman, Insley and Sven Lukin in Art In Process. The Visual Development of a Structure, organized by the Finch...