Styles & Movements

Abstract Expressionism

This movement in American painting came to prominence in the late 1940s and 1950s and it is now thought of as the most significant art movement anywhere since the Second World War. The painters embraced by the term worked mainly in New York (hence the term New York School ) and shared an outlook characterized by a spirit of revolt against tradition and a demand for spontaneous freedom of expression. The stylistic roots of Abstract Expressionism are complex, but despite its name it owed more to Surrealism—with its stress on automatism and intuition—than to Expressionism . The most famous Abstract Expressionist is Jackson Pollock, whose explosive energy best sums up the movement. The qualities basic to most Abstract Expressionist painting include the preference for working on a huge scale; the emphasis placed on surface qualities so that the flatness of the canvas is stressed; the adoption of an all-over type of treatment, in which the whole area of the picture is regarded as equally important; and the glorification of the act of painting itself. The central painters were Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Clyfford Still.

Some painters who arose to prominence during the later part of this movement and continued working in the 80s—indeed, Willem de Kooning was still painting in the 80s—include Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Friedel Dzubas, and Norman Bluhm.

Younger artists working in the 80s who were definitely influenced by abstract expressionism to a degree quite evident in their work include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Charles Clough, Julian Schnabel, Judy Pfaff, Gregory Amenoff, and Jedd Garet.