Pamela Hansen

Elwood Howell is a celebrated painter of abstract landscapes. Born in 1933, in Perkin, Illinois, Howell studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and the University of Illinois. For more than 50 years, he has been having a conversation with paint.

Howell elaborates, "When approaching my work, only a vague idea is in mind of what is to take place on the canvas or paper.” With this openness to explore the possibilities without agenda, Howell creates thought-provoking, dream-like landscapes and seascapes that transport the viewer to familiar yet otherworldly places. He composes these scenes almost exclusively from imagined visions in the studio, using acrylic, oil and watercolor on canvas, linen, paper and wood. Still, he must draw some inspiration from the scenery of East Hampton, New York, where he has lived and worked since 1974.

Through most of his oeuvre, Howel has utilized a high horizon line, a format he adopted 40 years ago and is still fascinated by today. The higher focal point forms a large foreground that the viewer can contemplate, explore and move about freely as if they were experiencing the expanse physically. In the space above the horizon line, an atmosphere is created that gives the impression that there is more to see, just out of view. 

Howell’s work is in the collections of the Illinois State Museum, Emanuel De Margerie (former director of the Louvre), Citibank New York, Reader’s Digest New York, 7Up and AT&T. Some of his many honors include the Merit and Purchase Award, Springfield Old Capitol Art Exhibit in 1971, the Award of Excellence from Heckscher Museum in 1975 and an honorable mention from Guild Hall in 2003.

On 1stDibs, find a selection of Elwood Howell landscape paintings, abstract paintings and prints.

Beginning in the early 20th century, abstract art became a leading style of modernism. Rather than portray the world in a way that represented reality, as had been the dominating style of Western art in the previous centuries, abstract paintings, prints and sculptures are marked by a shift to geometric forms, gestural shapes and experimentation with color to express ideas, subject matter and scenes.

Although abstract art flourished in the early 1900s, propelled by movements like Fauvism and Cubism, it was rooted in the 19th century. In the 1840s, J.M.W. Turner emphasized light and motion for atmospheric paintings in which concrete details were blurred, and Paul Cézanne challenged traditional expectations of perspective in the 1890s.

Some of the earliest abstract artists — Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint — expanded on these breakthroughs while using vivid colors and forms to channel spiritual concepts. Painter Piet Mondrian, a Dutch pioneer of the art movement, explored geometric abstraction partly owing to his belief in Theosophy, which is grounded in a search for higher spiritual truths and embraces philosophers of the Renaissance period and medieval mystics. Black Square, a daringly simple 1913 work by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was a watershed statement on creating art that was free “from the dead weight of the real world,” as he later wrote.

Surrealism in the 1920s, led by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Meret Oppenheim and others, saw painters creating abstract pieces in order to connect to the subconscious. When Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York during the mid-20th century, it similarly centered on the process of creation, in which Helen Frankenthaler’s expressive “soak-stain” technique, Jackson Pollock’s drips of paint, and Mark Rothko’s planes of color were a radical new type of abstraction.

Conceptual art, Pop art, Hard-Edge painting and many other movements offered fresh approaches to abstraction that continued into the 21st century, with major contemporary artists now exploring it, including Anish Kapoor, Mark Bradford, El Anatsui and Julie Mehretu.

Find original abstract paintings, sculptures, prints and other art on 1stDibs.