The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Acrylic painting with minimalist shapes outlined in black on a white surface. A thick-lined cube extends across the canvas in the background, overlayed by fine lined cubes in the center and lower right corner. Between these two layers of shapes are overlapping arcs of circles, with two thin-lined triangular prisms in the lower center and left.

Jupiter IV

1974

Al Held

(American, 1928–2005)
America
acrylic on canvas
Unframed: 152.4 x 152.4 cm (60 x 60 in.)
Purchased with a grant from the NEA and matched by gifts from members of The Cleveland Society for Contemporary Art 1976.101
© Al Held Foundation, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Location: 224A Contemporary Corridor

Did You Know?

Before enlisting in the United States Navy in 1945, Held claimed to have been expelled from high school in the Bronx.

Description

From 1969 to 1978, the American painter Al Held investigated spatial conundrums by suggesting volume and depth in large, stark paintings like Jupiter IV. Over a flat, white surface he superimposed bold, black lines of varying thickness to render interlocking cubes, flowing circular forms, and other three-dimensional shapes, providing a complex symphony of continuous geometrical forms floating in infinite space.
  • Sims, Lowery Stokes. The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content, and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 77-78, no. 112
  • The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006).
    MOCA Cleveland (6/9/2006 - 8/20/2006): "The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art", no. 112, p. 122, repr. p. 78.
    "Contemporary Collection," CMA (Aug. 17 - Nov. 6, 1983).
    "Contemporary Art," CMA (Nov. 3 - Dec. 12, 1982).
    Year in Review, 1976. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 1-March 6, 1977).
    "Year in Review 1976," CMA (1977).
    "Al Held," Adler Castillo Gallery, Caracas Venezuela (1975).
  • {{cite web|title=Jupiter IV|url=false|author=Al Held|year=1974|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1976.101