| Previous Artist | Next Artist |
I suppose if I had it to do over, I would paint flowers and the old red barn. People run like rabbits from anything with any originality to it. I expect a book of my work will have to be published posthumously.
- Dellard Cassity
While internationally recognized artists such as Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly and Victor Vasarely were pioneering the styles of Hard-Edge abstraction and Optical Art in the world’s big cities, Dellard Cassity was quietly doing the same in his small town of Litchfield, Illinois. 
Hard Edge Abstraction and Optical Art were both Mid 20th Century movements that reacted against the painterly texture and explosion of forms inherent in Abstract Expressionism. Hard edge painters were searching for the “still center” of color and shape. For them the canvas itself became an object that did not need to refer to anything else. Painting with a knife-edge clarity, they used their direct experience of color and form, eliminating all other associations, to create a single dominant experience. Optical artists sought to create an experience of the painting in the mind itself, by playing tricks on the eye. Artists associated with Hard-Edge, Op Art, and Color-Field painting include: Barnett Newman, Sol LeWitt, Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, and Victor Vasarely, amongst others. 
