By Alidë Kohlhaas

There is a remarkable exhibition of paintings on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario that may not be considered a blockbuster show, but still deserves far more attention than it appears to be getting. Called The Shape of Colour, it consists of works by some of the world's most well known artists of an era that has sadly passed. There are also works by younger artists, who have rediscovered color field art, so named by the late New York art critic, Clement Greenberg, whose writings were both famous and infamous.

To some, The Shape of Color is a show that evokes nostalgia, but for a younger generation it should evoke curiosity. At the same time it should awaken a thirst for the permanence of the art of putting paint on canvas rather than the creation of impermanence through installations that are alive only for the brief time allowed in an exhibition.

This show presents works that come from a time when artists were very much concerned with color and how it affected the viewer. An 83-year-old Henri Matisse said in 1952, "Colors win you over more and more. A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has an effect on your blood pressure. A certain color has a tonic effect. A new era is opening."

The artists who were part of this new era, a concentrated period during the 1950s and early '60s, still painted abstractly, yet their work seemed calmer and more reflective than abstract expressionism. They may have had social concerns, but their art expressed these with subtle finesse rather than the kind of punch in the face that much of today's art self-indulgently and self-consciously levels at audiences.

The idea of color being a primary expression, devoid of drawing, began much earlier than the era of color field art. It can be said to have its origins in the 1930s when a still young Mark Rothko stated that the "[T]radition of starting with drawing [is] an . . . .