Tachisme

Tachisme, style of abstract painting popular in France in the 1940s and 1950s (from the French word tache, meaning “spot”). Tachisme was the European counterpart of Abstract Expressionism in the United States. Breaking free from the restraints of Cubism, the Tachistes adopted a spontaneous approach to brushwork, typified by all-over blotches of thickly layered colour and dribbled paint, or swirling calligraphy applied straight from the tube, as in the work of Georges Mathieu. The terms art informel, meaning gestural or action painting, and abstraction lyrique, meaning lyrical abstraction, are also used to describe the style. Other prominent Tachistes were Hans Hartung, A. O. Wolfgang Schulze Wols, Gérard Schneider, and Pierre Soulanges.