Sky above Clouds IV

This monumental canvas, stretching over 24 feet wide, immerses the viewer in a vast, ethereal landscape of clouds, seen from high above. Painted in 1965, when the artist was 77, this work culminates a series inspired by her airplane journeys. The composition presents an endless expanse of white and gray forms, suggesting the quiet grandeur of the sky observed from a window seat. It captures a sense of the infinite, a recurring theme in her later work as she explored the abstracted forms of nature on an increasingly grand scale. The sheer size of this painting was a deliberate challenge, one she pursued with intense focus, working long hours to complete it before the cold set in. Its scale was so immense that it famously couldn't fit through the doors of a museum in San Francisco during a retrospective, leading to its extended loan and eventual acquisition by the Art Institute.