WattsOS
EK
Easy Keyhole
1980 · Acrylic and wax crayon with rhoplex on paper mounted on foam-core board
24 7/16 × 31 7/8 in. (62 × 81 cm)
Other (Primary substrate): 22 3/8 × 29 15/16 in. (56.8 × 76 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture
Cynthia Carlson
Artist
PaintingPattern and DecorationGeometric AbstractionColor Field
Representation
None documented
2
Institutional Exhibitions
6
Works in Collection
10
Assets Indexed
0
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
80%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Movements
- • Pattern and Decoration
- • Geometric Abstraction
- • Color Field
Related Artists
No edges recorded
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.
Selected Institutional Exhibitions
View all exhibitions →No image
Painting and Sculpture
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1974
No image
Untitled I
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1971
About
Why this artist matters now
Cynthia Carlson is an American painter working in acrylic and oil who constructs compositions of interlocking planes to investigate color interaction and spatial illusion. Her geometric abstractions emerged within postwar abstraction, engaging the legacy of color field painting through a systematic, architectural approach to composition. Rather than gesture or surface incident, her work prioritizes the perceptual effects of chromatic relationships and their capacity to dissolve or reinforce planar structure.
Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 25d ago
Graph relationships
Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
Pattern and Decoration
Medium
Painting
Related Artists
12 in graph
Institutional
Museum Collections
Canonical record
Artworks (6)
Record
Images
Related artists
Adjacent in the graph
Mark Rothko
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Sam Gilliam
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Stanley Whitney
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Brice Marden
Shared movement
Ellsworth Kelly
Shared movement
Alan Davie
Shared movement
Lisa Yuskavage
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Robert Ryman
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Adolph Gottlieb
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Jasper Johns
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Neo Rauch
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Richard Artschwager
Also painting
Record
Movements and affiliations
Institutional
Representation & Collections
In collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In collection
Museum of Modern Art
New York, US
In collection
Art Institute of Chicago
Record