Abstract Expressionism

Abstract Expressionism, movement in mid-20th-century painting that was primarily concerned with the spontaneous assertion of the individual through the act of painting. A variety of styles exists within the movement, which is characterized more by the concepts that underlie it than by one homogeneous style. As its name implies, Abstract Expressionist art is not recognizably figurative and generally does not adhere to the limits of conventional representation.

The roots of Abstract Expressionism lie in the totally non-figurative work of the Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky and that of the Surrealists, who deliberately used the subconscious and spontaneity in creative activity. The arrival in New York during World War II (1939-1945) of such avant-garde European painters as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, and Yves Tanguy inspired the spread of Abstract Expressionism among American painters in the 1940s and 1950s. American painters were also influenced by the subjective abstractions of the Armenian-born painter Arshile Gorky, who had emigrated to the United States in 1920, and by the German-born American painter and teacher Hans Hofmann, who stressed the dynamic interaction of coloured planes.

The Abstract Expressionist movement is centred in New York and is also known as the New York school. Although the styles embraced within Abstract Expressionism were as diverse as the styles of the painters themselves, two major tendencies, action painting and colour-field painting, developed. Action painters were concerned with paint texture and consistency and the gestures of the artist, while colour-field painters gave their works impact by using unified colour and shape. Jackson Pollock was the quintessential action painter. His unique approach to painting involved interlacing lines of dripped and poured paint that seemed to extend in unending arabesques. Willem de Kooning and Franz Josef Kline, also action painters, both used broad impasto brush strokes to create rhythmic abstractions in virtually infinite space. Mark Rothko created pulsating rectangles of saturated colour in his works; many of these works are prime examples of colour-field painting. Bradley Walker Tomlin, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, and Clyfford Still combined elements of both action and colour-field painting in their works.

Abstract Expressionism also flourished in Europe, where it influenced such French painters as Nicolas de Staël, Pierre Soulages, and Jean Dubuffet. The European manifestations of Abstract Expressionism were Tachisme (from the French tache, “spot”), which emphasized patches of colour, and art informel (“informal art”), which rejected formal structure. Both had especially close affinities with New York action painting. Tachiste painters include the Frenchmen Georges Mathieu and Camille Bryen, the Spaniard Antoni Tàpies, the Italian Alberto Burri, the German Wols, and the Canadian Jean Paul Riopelle.