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Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the immediate aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depression and Mexican muralists. [1] [2] The term was first applied to American art in 1946 by the ...
May 17, 2024 · The Abstract Expressionist movement itself is generally regarded as having begun with the paintings done by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning in the late 1940s and early ’50s. In spite of the diversity of the Abstract Expressionist movement, three general approaches can be distinguished.
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It is one of the many paradoxes of Abstract Expressionism that the roots of the movement lay in the figurative painting of the 1930s. Almost all the artists who would later become abstract painters in New York in the 1940s and 1950s were stamped by the experience of the Great Depression, and they came to maturity whilst painting in styles influence...
Building upon Surrealism
Surrealism was an original influence on the themes and concepts of the Abstract Expressionists. Although the American painters were uneasy with the overt Freudian symbolism of the European movement, they were still inspired by its interests in the unconscious, as well as its strain of primitivism and preoccupation with mythology. Many were particularly interested in the ideas of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who believed that elements of a collective unconscious had been handed down throu...
Color Field Painting
The emerging Abstract Expressionist artists had an impetus to move away from the biomorphicSurrealism of Miró and Picasso, and toward an increasingly reductive style that emphasized a more personal expression. Still, Rothko, and Newman are typical of this progression as they ventured into the world of color as expressive, emotional object in its own right. Still created canvases marked by bold colors that were torn up and ruptured by other juxtaposing textures and forms, angular, uneven and v...
Action Painting
Greenberg also championed Pollock's "drip" paintings in a formalist regard (as an exciting and vast new way to look at color splotches and spontaneous paint forms) although the work was most known for catapulting Abstract Expressionism's other main style - that of action painting. Harold Rosenberg, another important critic of the time, explained in a 1952 article for ART News entitled "The American Action Painters": "At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after...
By the mid 1950s the style had also run its course in other ways. The movement's greatest achievements were often built on a conflict between chaos and control. which could only be played out in so many ways. Some artists, such as Newman and Rothko, had evolved a style so reductive that there was little room for development - and to change course w...
Learn about the origins, ideas, and artists of Abstract Expressionism, a post-war movement that revolutionized modern art in America. Explore the key works, concepts, and legacy of this expressive and experimental style of painting.
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Learn about the movement that emerged in New York in the 1940s, influenced by European modernism and inspired by the unconscious. Explore the diverse styles and techniques of artists such as Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, and others.
Learn about the movement in American painting that emerged after World War II, using abstraction to convey strong emotional content. Explore the artists, processes, materials, and context of Abstract Expressionism at MoMA.
Learn about the group of American artists who emerged after World War II and created non-objective paintings that expressed universal truths and personal emotions. Explore their artistic and intellectual influences, styles, and legacy in the post-war art world.
Learn about the new forms of abstract art developed by American painters in the 1940s and 1950s, often characterised by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity. Explore the two broad groupings: the action painters and the colour field painters, and their influences and approaches.
