Al Held was born in New York in 1928. He grew up in the East Bronx where his father was a jeweller working in a factory. When he was 16 he was expelled from high school for chronic truancy. Instead of going to school he hung out at the cinema and later joined the navy. He stayed in the navy for two years, after which he returned to New York, where he met a man who was studying at the Art Students League. Held started to attend classes in drawing and painting there and after a while used the GI Bill to enrol as a full time student. From 1949 till 1953 he lived in Paris, at the same time that Ellsworth Kelly and Sam Francis were there. On his return to New York he made contact with Abstract Expressionist painters, he himself working in a subdued, impressionistic manner. He had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1959.
After starting his career as an abstract expressionist, Held rejected the style in 1967 and moved on to painting coloured geometric shapes, a reinterpretation of Cubism that developed over 20 years into a sophisticated abstract style. These later works, also dubbed “concrete abstractions”, were met with great acclaim, establishing him as a major figure in the art world.
Al Held was appointed by Yale in 1962 and taught there until 1980. In 1966 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has exhibited in places as varied as Galerie Ziegler, Zurich (2006), DaimlerChrysler Contemporary, Berlin (2005) and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1996).
Al Held died in Camareta, Italy, in 2005.