Living Color: The Best Examples of Exploring Examples of Lyrical Abstraction

Lyrical abstraction isn’t a theory first and a painting second; it’s almost always the other way around. The best examples start with the act of painting itself—gesture, speed, risk—and only afterwards do critics come in and attach labels.

Picture Georges Mathieu in 1950s Paris, working so fast he practically staged performances with his canvases. He’d fling black, red, and gold arcs of paint across massive surfaces, like calligraphy that had broken free from language. Works such as his large-scale canvases from the mid‑1950s are classic examples of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction: they’re emotional, gestural, and absolutely uninterested in depicting objects. They read like weather reports of the artist’s inner state.

Around the same time, in the United States, Helen Frankenthaler was pouring thinned paint onto raw canvas, letting color seep and stain in soft, translucent pools. A painting like “Mountains and Sea” (1952) is often cited as an early example of the Color Field approach, but it also sits right inside the territory of lyrical abstraction. It’s loose, improvisational, and feels more like a memory of a landscape than an actual place. If you’re hunting for real examples of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction, Frankenthaler’s poured paintings are a perfect starting point.

Historical examples of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction in Europe and the US

To understand why lyrical abstraction matters, it helps to trace a few landmark examples across the mid‑20th century. These aren’t just footnotes; they’re turning points.

In postwar Europe, artists like Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages were carving out their own path away from both propaganda and polite realism. Hartung’s jagged, scratched marks across hazy color fields are a textbook example of lyrical abstraction’s preference for gesture over geometry. Soulages, known for his deep black surfaces he called Outrenoir ("beyond black"), gives us another example of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction: the painting isn’t a picture of something; it’s an encounter with light and texture itself.

Across the Atlantic, the label “lyrical abstraction” gained momentum in the late 1960s and early 1970s, partly as a reaction against the cool, controlled rules of Minimalism. Painters like Ronnie Landfield and Dan Christensen pushed color into flowing bands, sprays, and arcs that felt almost musical. Landfield’s horizontal color bands—soft-edged, atmospheric, and slightly unstable—are some of the best examples of how lyrical abstraction uses landscape not as a subject, but as a mood.

If you want to cross-check the historical narrative, institutions like the Smithsonian American Art Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art maintain accessible online collections and essays that track the rise of abstract painting, including many works that fall under the lyrical abstraction umbrella.

Beyond geometry: an example of how lyrical abstraction differs from hard‑edge styles

One of the easiest ways to recognize lyrical abstraction is to compare it to its stricter cousin: geometric abstraction. Think of Josef Albers and his precise nested squares versus Joan Mitchell and her explosive, tangled brushstrokes.

Mitchell’s multi-panel works from the 1960s and 1970s are prime examples of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction. Stand in front of one and you feel like you’ve walked into a storm of color—blues, yellows, and greens colliding, scraping, and overlapping. There’s structure, but it’s organic, almost like listening to jazz rather than a metronome.

An example of geometric abstraction, by contrast, might focus on perfect shapes and clean edges, often with tape and rulers involved. Lyrical abstraction wants the opposite: the wobble of the hand, the speed of a gesture, the accident that turns into the heart of the painting. When you’re looking for real examples, ask yourself: does this painting feel like a song improvised in one take, or a blueprint executed to perfection? The first answer usually points you toward lyrical territory.

Contemporary best examples: exploring lyrical abstraction in 2024–2025

Lyrical abstraction didn’t stay locked in the 1950s and 1970s. If anything, it’s having a quiet resurgence, especially in the age of social media, where color and gesture read beautifully on a phone screen.

In 2024 and 2025, examples include a wide range of artists who might not even use the label “lyrical abstraction” but are clearly part of its living family.

You’ll see it in large, color-drenched canvases by artists who layer thin washes of paint until the surface looks like stained glass in motion. Some contemporary painters build veils of neon pinks and blues, then cut through them with fast, dark marks that feel almost like graffiti. Others use squeegees and mops instead of brushes, dragging pigment across the surface in long, breathing sweeps.

Current museum and gallery programming reflects this trend. Exhibitions focused on abstract painting often highlight works where gesture and emotion dominate. Many university galleries and art schools—such as those connected with institutions like Harvard University’s art museums—continue to show and study painters whose work fits squarely within this tradition, even if the marketing language has shifted toward words like “expressive abstraction” or “gestural color painting.”

If you’re scrolling through artist-run spaces, online viewing rooms, or MFA shows, some of the best examples of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction right now are:

• Large canvases where color is poured, stained, and sprayed in layers that partially obscure each other, like overlapping memories.
• Works on paper where ink and watercolor bleed into each other, leaving soft halos and unexpected edges.
• Paintings that mix drawing and painting—charcoal lines cutting through clouds of acrylic or oil—giving the sense of thought unfolding in real time.

These real examples show that lyrical abstraction has adapted to new materials—acrylic markers, spray paint, digital sketches translated into analog paint—without losing its core obsession: the emotional charge of a gesture.

Global and cross‑disciplinary examples of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction

Lyrical abstraction isn’t just a Western story. In 2024–2025, some of the most interesting examples include artists blending calligraphic traditions from East Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East with abstract painting.

Think of painters who start from Arabic or Chinese characters, then push them beyond legibility into pure rhythm. The result is a surface that feels like writing, music, and dance all at once—another powerful example of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction in a global context.

You’ll also find lyrical abstraction bleeding into other mediums:

• In textile art, where hand-dyed fabrics are stitched into flowing, color-saturated compositions that echo painted gestures.
• In digital painting, where artists use tablets to create sweeping, layered marks that are later printed large-scale on canvas.
• In public murals, where swirling, non-figurative forms turn the side of a building into a kind of open-air emotional landscape.

These cross-disciplinary works are some of the best examples of how the spirit of lyrical abstraction survives even when traditional oil-on-canvas isn’t the main vehicle.

How to recognize real examples of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction

If you’re standing in front of a painting (or scrolling past it) and wondering whether it counts as an example of lyrical abstraction, a few questions can help, without turning this into a rigid checklist.

Ask yourself: does the painting seem built around the energy of the gesture? Are the marks fast, looping, or improvisational? Do the colors feel chosen for emotional impact rather than strict logic? Is there a sense that the artist was “in motion” while making it—walking around the canvas, pouring, scraping, or scribbling?

In many of the best examples of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction, you can almost reconstruct the artist’s movements: a sweep from left to right, a sudden flick of the wrist, a pause where the brush pressed harder and left a denser patch of color. The painting reads like a record of actions, not just an image.

Another clue is how much the work relies on recognizable objects. Lyrical abstraction may hint at landscapes or bodies, but it rarely spells them out. Instead, it hovers in that in-between space where color and form trigger associations without locking you into a single narrative.

For students and emerging painters, looking at these real examples can be a way to think about process. Many art programs—documented through universities and museums—encourage exercises that echo lyrical abstraction: fast studies, non-dominant-hand drawing, or painting to music. While these aren’t medical or psychological protocols, they often echo research on how creative activity can support well-being and stress reduction, a topic explored in resources from organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Why the best examples still feel so personal

What keeps lyrical abstraction relevant in 2025 is how personal it feels. In a world saturated with high-definition images, AI-generated pictures, and endless photo filters, there’s something almost radical about a painting that refuses to show you a clear object and instead insists on feeling.

The best examples of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction feel like diaries written in color. You don’t need a PhD in art history to respond to them. You might not know that you’re looking at an example of a specific movement, but you recognize the sensation: this feels like anxiety, or joy, or grief, or the rush of a city at night.

When artists share studio shots and process videos online, you can watch the painting change layer by layer. A calm blue field gets slashed with orange; a delicate wash is suddenly interrupted by a dark knot of marks. Those are the moments that define lyrical abstraction—the decisions made in real time, the willingness to risk ruining something in order to make it more alive.

In that sense, the most honest examples include not just the finished works hanging in museums, but the half-finished canvases leaning against studio walls, the sketchbooks full of loose ink drawings, the experiments that never make it to a gallery. They’re all part of the same conversation about how to paint feeling instead of things.

FAQ: examples of lyrical abstraction, answered quickly

Q: Can you give a simple example of lyrical abstraction I might recognize?
A: Helen Frankenthaler’s “Mountains and Sea” (1952) is often cited as a clear example of lyrical abstraction in action: thin, poured color, no sharp outlines, and a mood that feels like a remembered landscape rather than a literal view.

Q: Are all abstract expressionist works examples of lyrical abstraction?
A: No. Some abstract expressionist paintings are more raw or aggressive, while others are more structured. Lyrical abstraction tends to emphasize fluid color, musical rhythm, and a slightly lighter, more atmospheric touch. Joan Mitchell and Hans Hartung offer a good example of how the two areas overlap without being identical.

Q: What are some contemporary examples of artists working in this style?
A: Many contemporary painters, especially those working with poured acrylics, spray paint, and large gestural marks, are continuing the tradition. You’ll find examples in recent exhibitions at major museums, university galleries, and artist-run spaces, even if the label “lyrical abstraction” isn’t always used in the press release.

Q: How can I tell if my own painting is an example of lyrical abstraction?
A: If your work is non-figurative, driven by gesture and color, and you’re more interested in mood than in depicting clear objects, you’re already working close to lyrical abstraction. Looking at historical and contemporary examples of exploring examples of lyrical abstraction can help you see where your work fits in that broader story.

Q: Where can I learn more about examples of abstract art styles?
A: Museum sites such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum offer reliable overviews of different abstract movements, along with searchable collections where you can explore many real examples of lyrical abstraction and related styles.