Ed Clark obituary

Abstract painter whose innovative technique was characterised by thickly applied swathes of colourIn 1957 the artist Ed Clark, who has died aged 93, was in his New York studio making a painting for a forthcoming show when he decided to introduce an element of collage, a stretch of paper that hung over the side of the canvas. In doing so, Clark came to be regarded as the first American artist to have created a shaped painting, in which the composition breaks free of the medium’s traditional