ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM, movement in painting that developed in the
1940s and was primarily concerned with expressing through line and color the
artist's emotional experiences and reactions to the world rather than with
representing the objective situations that occasioned them. The movement was
part of the organ 717l115h ic, emotional, expressionistic approach to art developed in Europe in the early 20th century in contrast to the
geometrically structural, rationalist approach of the cubists. The roots of
abstract expressionism are in the totally nonfigurative work of the
Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky and that of the surrealists, who
stressed the importance of the subconscious and spontaneity. The arrival in New York City during World
War II of such avant-garde European painters as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Marc
Chagall, and Yves Tanguy inspired a flowering of abstract expressionism among
American painters in the late 1940s. They were also influenced by the
subjective abstractions of the Armenian-born painter Arshile Gorky, who had
immigrated to the U.S.
in 1920, and by the German-born American painter and
teacher Hans Hofmann, who stressed the dynamic interaction of colored planes.
The abstract expressionist movement centered
in New York City, called the New York school, included at
one extreme action painters, such as Jackson Pollock, whose unique
approach to painting involved interlacing lines of dripped and poured paint
that seemed to extend in unending arabesques. In the same wing were Willem de
Kooning and Franz Kline, both of whom used broad impasto brush strokes to
create rhythmic abstractions in virtually infinite space. At the other extreme
of abstract expressionism were the quieter canvases of Mark Rothko, who created
pulsating areas of saturated color. In between were the works of Bradley Walker
Tomlin (1899-1953), Philip Guston (1913-80), William Baziotes (1912-63), Robert
Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, and Clyfford Still.
Abstract expressionism also flourished in Europe, where it influenced such French painters as
Nicolas de Stael (1914-55), Pierre Soulages (1919- ), and Jean Dubuffet. The
European abstract expressionist schools Tachism
(from Fr. tache, "spot"), which emphasized
patches of color, and art informel, which
rejected formal structure, had close affinities with New York action painting. Tachist painters
include the Frenchmen Georges Mathieu (1921- ) and Camille Bryen (1907-77), the
Spaniard Antoni Tąpies, the Italian Alberto Burri (1915-95), the German Wols
(1913-51), and the Canadian Jean Paul Riopelle.
The movement's adherents in the 1980s and '90s
have developed eloquent, sometimes disturbing, works. Among these painters are
Elizabeth Murray (1940- ) and Katherine Porter (1941- ).
