Executed in 1980–1981, Robert Reed’s San Romano, Legal Action is a major painting from the artist’s celebrated San Romano series and perfectly encapsulates the cacophonous, intricately rendered geometric abstraction that led to major acclaim during Reed’s lifetime. Reed left behind a remarkable legacy as both educator and artist; a student of Bauhaus artist Josef Albers, he forged a style of abstraction based on the “real” forms found in everyday life and notably had his first solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1973. A professor of painting and printmaking at the celebrated Yale School of Art for 45 years, Reed notably became the first—and, at the time, only—fully tenured Black faculty member. Reed’s work is represented in the permanent collections of such prestigious institutions as the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
The San Romano series, to which the present work belongs, is directly inspired by Paolo Uccello’s epic painting The Battle of San Romano, circa 1438–1440, which Reed first encountered at the National Gallery in London in 1979. Moved by its teeming visual plentitude, Reed attempted to replicate the frenetic effect of Uccello’s painting in his own compositions; the resulting series of large-scale abstract works showcases the same ordered chaos as Uccello’s Cinquecento masterpiece. The present work, San Romano, Legal Action, is a major example from this series and encapsulates Reed’s unmatched ability to tame energy within the picture plane.