About the Artist

Born 1928, Brooklyn, New York, and acknowledged as an articulate individualist and a maverick,
Al Held began his career as an Abstract Expressionist painter. He studied at the Art Students’ League, New York City and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, Paris. He was a professor of art at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut from 1962-1980. In 1966 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1982 he was elected to the Board of Trustees of the American Academy in Rome. He is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in New York.

Held has exhibited in more than 150 group and 75 one-person exhibitions and his paintings are in the permanent collections of museums throughout the United Sates, Australia, Germany and Switzerland.

Acrylic on canvas 108 inches by 108 inches by 4 inches

Quattro Centric XIV

The primary colors and geometric shapes of Al Held’s work Quattro Centric XIV reflect the contemporary forms and primary colors in the interior space of the Cerritos Library’s second floor. The artist has effectively used a large-scale format to explore the boundaries of geometry in two-dimensional space. He has created a painting that exudes a powerful and futuristic presence.

Location: Elevator Tower - Second Floor