Artist John McCracken, whose work helped define L.A’s postwar aesthetic, is dead at 76

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John McCracken, who fused painting and sculpture in works that variously exemplified the mid-20th century L.A. Cool School, Finish Fetish and Minimalism, died Friday in New York. He was 76.

McCracken’s work, encompassing painted geometric sculpture and, in later years, highly polished bronze and reflective stainless steel, is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art and New York’s Musum of Modern Art, among other major museums.

Read Christopher Knight’s full obituary: John McCracken dies at 76; contemporary artist made geometric sculptures