Alphabet Paintings

James Fuentes presents two iconic Alphabet Paintings by New York artist Al Held (1928–2005) at Independent 20th Century, marking a historic return to the former Met Breuer building more than 50 years after their inclusion in the artist's Whitney Museum retrospective in 1974.

Acclaimed for his monumental geometric paintings, Held occupies a pivotal position in postwar art, achieving emotional intensity through rigorous geometric clarity amid the city's contending currents of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. Each staging a monumental letterform (or its apparent fragment), the Alphabet works (1961–67) crystallize Held's core concerns: specificity over ambiguity, a bodily sense of scale and compression, and the tension between illusion and surface.

Spanning fourteen feet, Upside Down Triangle (1966) turns on the logic of orientation or a “correct” reading. Resolving as a sideways, cropped “A” defined by a central opening and implied shadow, the work articulates the instabilities of image and sign. Its precursor, The “I” (1965), reduces the letterform to a stark vertical presence punctuated by narrow white edges that allow the image to emerge via negative space. Subtly tilted and swelling inward, the letter seems to breathe, feeling at once immensely concrete and on the verge of dissolving. The “I” was made during Held's return travels to Paris, a city that had played a formative role in his early career.

Held later reflected of the Alphabet paintings: “I had no interest in geometry per se, and certainly I had no interest in symbolism. Things just developed this way. I was looking for specificity in the letters, just as I had been with circles and triangle. That's why I insisted that the title be preceded by ‘the’, as in The ‘I’.”

Presented by James Fuentes (52 White Street, Tribeca) at Independent 20th Century, September 24–27, 2026, The Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue, New York.