Unpainted Paintings (2011) was an international survey of more than two dozen extraordinary abstract works from the 1950s to the present that reveal a continuous strain of Modernism.

For decades, artists have oscillated between loyalty to pictorial tradition and a desire to expand the boundaries of, undermine, or even attack the picture plane. Pushing the expressive potential of the non-conventional with such actions as burning, tearing, stitching, smothering, and soiling, the artists represented in this historical show—each a pioneer of spilling forms, aggressive gestures, sewn alternatives, and impermanent materials—included Lynda Benglis, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jean Dubuffet, Raymond Hains, Sheila Hicks, Piero Manzoni, Otto Muehl, Blinky Palermo, Paola Pivi, Robert Rauschenberg.

In the aftermath of World War II, several artists from different cities, responding to different and profoundly altered social, political, and intellectual contexts, shunned conventional parameters in search of a new definition of what constitutes “painting.” Many deployed new types of materiality and embraced process-oriented methods to construct their art. They asserted aggressively iconoclastic, experimental, and irreverent approaches towards two-dimensional supports; abandoning paint—and sometimes canvas and board—they resorted to fiber, garbage, precious metals, plastic, dirt, and visceral substances of every type.

The motivations behind the experimental practices of the artists included in Unpainted Paintings are as varied as the works themselves. Some artists emerged through a transgressive aesthetic and a desire to destroy easel painting because of its bourgeois connotations. Others have explored performative and formal avenues in a less politicized and more playful manner. When considered together, the earlier artists in the exhibition forged a legacy of daring and rebellion for subsequent generations, pushing the limits of the established definitions, material conditions, and conceptual frameworks for painting.

By bringing together such a broad array of artists and works, Unpainted Paintings attempted to re-trace a compelling and provocative impulse across generations, nationalities, and artistic movements. No matter how unconventional their materials are, and despite the relative lack of actual paint, each artist has been passionately committed to exploring “painting” in principle and has renewed the form’s potential through experimentation and irreverence.

Organized by Alison Gingeras, chief curator at Palazzo Grassi, Unpainted Paintings included works loaned from artists’ estates, significant private collections, and, in the case of younger artists, studios directly. Many of these objects were on view in the United States or publicly for the first time.