Born in Grandin, North Dakota in 1904, Still spent his formative years across the American West, earning his MFA at Washington State University in 1935. Moving to New York and later San Francisco during the 1940s, he developed a radical visual language alongside Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, fundamentally reshaping post-war American painting.
Renowned for his monumental scale and visceral presence, Still used thick, dry impasto applied with palette knives directly onto canvas to create his signature, jagged 'flame-like' shapes set against raw, exposed grounds. Often described as evoking primal forces or vast, geologic formations, his paintings avoid conventional balance or narrative. To prevent viewers from attaching symbolic or literal associations to his art, Still refused to assign descriptive titles, preferring alphanumeric designations instead.
Fiercely independent and distrustful of the commercial art world, Still severed ties with commercial galleries in the early 1950s and withdrew his work from public view until his death in 1980. Having retained roughly 95 per cent of his total lifetime output, his will strictly stipulated that his entire personal collection be given to an American city willing to construct a dedicated venue for it. As a result, his works are among the rarest of any major 20th-century master on the secondary market, with fewer than 40 major canvases estimated to be in private hands.
In 2011, the Clyfford Still Museum opened in Denver, housing thousands of works that had remained inaccessible for decades. Other major public collections holding his work include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Tate Collection in London.
Clyfford Still (1904-1980)
PH-234
Clyfford Still (1904-1980)
PH-1033
Clyfford Still (1904-1980)
1946 (PH-182)
Clyfford Still (1904-1980)
PH-148 (1960-F)
Clyfford Still (1904-1980)
Untitled (PH-786, 1955-R)
CLYFFORD STILL (1904-1980)
PHX-14
CLYFFORD STILL (1904-1980)
PHX-10