Commonly made of either linen or cotton thread, but also manufactured from man-made materials such as polyester.
Shaped canvas
A shaped canvas is a canvas that is not the traditional rectangular shape. Although there have been many examples of irregular shaped canvases throughout the history of art, the term gained currency in the 1960s and tends to be associated with a type of geometric abstract painting that came to prominence in the late 1950s early 1960s. Artists like Frank Stella used the edges of irregular shaped canvases to define the form of the painting. Ellsworth Kelly and Jeremy Moon also notably experimented with shaped canvases.
Shaped canvas also raised questions about the painting as an object in its own right, not as something representative or illustrative of something else. In this sense shaped canvas paintings are sometimes described as sculptures.
