Larry Zox, 69; artist known for hard-edged abstract paintings

Larry Zox, 69, a painter known for his work in the color field movement of the 1960s, died of cancer Saturday at his home in Colchester, Conn.

The artist’s work involved splicing a color field to create the impression of shifting planes, an approach that produced what critic Robert Hughes once described as “the most openly decorative, anxiety-free, socially indifferent canvases in the history of American art.”

Zox was known for hard-edged abstract paintings, which were showcased in major museums, including a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1973.

In a review of a 2005 show of his work at New York’s Stephen Haller Gallery, Edward Leffingwell wrote in Art in America, “Larry Zox’s geometric abstractions of the 1960s are as probing and engaging today as they ever were.”

Born May 31, 1937, in Des Moines, Zox studied at the University of Oklahoma, Drake University and the Des Moines Art Center, where he trained under noted German artist George Grosz.

Zox was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a National Council of the Arts award and served as an artist-in-residence at Dartmouth, the University of North Carolina and Yale.

His studio on 20th Street in New York was known in the 1970s as a gathering spot for an eclectic crowd of artists, boxers and bikers.