Abstract expressionism

Lore & Background

Abstract expressionism arose during World War II and began to be showcased in the early 1940s at New York galleries such as The Art of This Century Gallery. The movement was notably influenced by the spontaneous and subconscious creation methods of Surrealist artists like André Masson and Max Ernst. Artists combined the emotional intensity of German Expressionism with the radical visual vocabularies of European avant-garde schools including Synthetic Cubism. The post-war McCarthy era saw artistic censorship, but abstract subject matter was seen as apolitical and therefore safe. Key figures of the New York School included Jackson Pollock, whose technique of dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor had roots in the work of André Masson, Max Ernst, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The movement was not limited to painting but included influential collagists and sculptors such as David Smith, Louise Nevelson, and others. Contemporary art critics played a significant role in the movement's development. Critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg promoted the work of artists associated with abstract expressionism, particularly Jackson Pollock. Rosenberg's concept of the canvas as an 'arena in which to act' was pivotal in defining the approach of action painters. The cultural reign of abstract expressionism in the United States had diminished by the early 1960s, while its subsequent rejection led to the development of Pop art and Minimalism.

Reader's Guide

Abstract expressionism was seen as rebellious and idiosyncratic, encompassing various artistic styles. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the Western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris. The movement's name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus, and Synthetic Cubism. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working mostly in New York who had quite different styles, and even to work that is neither especially abstract nor expressionist. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, the influence of abstract expressionism can be seen in diverse movements in the U.S. and Europe, including Tachisme and Neo-expressionism, among others. The movement generated a number of supportive poets, including Frank O'Hara, and photographers such as Aaron Siskind and Fred McDarrah, as well as filmmakers, notably Robert Frank. Although the abstract expressionist school spread quickly throughout the United States, the epicenters of this style were New York City and the San Francisco Bay area of California. The legacy of abstract expressionism includes its role in establishing American art as a global force and its influence on subsequent movements that rejected its emphasis on individualism.

Did You Know?

• The movement was notably influenced by the spontaneous and subconscious creation methods of Surrealist artists like André Masson and Max Ernst.
• The cultural reign of abstract expressionism in the United States had diminished by the early 1960s.

Naming a Movement: From Der Sturm to the New York Scene

The label "abstract expressionism" traveled a long road before it settled on the American art scene. The movement itself crystallized in the post-World War II years, representing a decisive break from the socially engaged realism that had dominated American galleries through the 1930s—a realism shaped by the economic trauma of the Great Depression and the monumental public murals of Mexican artists. By the 1950s, what had begun as a loose gathering of painters and sculptors in New York had secured mainstream acceptance, marking a genuine cultural turning point for the United States in the global art conversation.

A Fractious Family: The New York School and Its Range

The New York School, the creative heart of abstract expressionism, was never a unified faction. Its roster included painters as diverse as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Theodoros Stamos, Jack Tworkov, Norman Lewis, and Lee Krasner. The movement also stretched well beyond the flat canvas: sculptors and collagists such as David Smith and Louise Nevelson contributed three-dimensional works, while Paul Hultberg pushed boundaries by creating large-scale murals in vitreous enamel on copper and steel—a medium traditionally reserved for jewelry—and devising his own open-air firing method for panels too large for conventional kilns. Stylistically, the group defied easy categorization. Pollock's frenetic drip compositions, de Kooning's violent Women series, and Rothko's meditative rectangles of color all fell under the same umbrella, even though Rothko himself rejected the label "abstract" for his work. Despite the appearance of pure spontaneity, most of these large-scale paintings demanded considerable planning.

Roots in Surrealism, Expressionism, and the European Avant-Garde

Abstract expressionism did not spring from a vacuum. Its most immediate predecessor was Surrealism, particularly the spontaneous, automatic, and subconscious methods championed by André Masson and Max Ernst. Pollock's signature technique of dripping paint onto a canvas laid flat on the floor traces its lineage directly to Masson, Ernst, and the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. The exile-surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, working through his magazine DYN, further prepared the ground for the young American abstracts by weaving together ideas from quantum mechanics, idiosyncratic readings of totemic vision, and the spatial structures of native-Indian painting from British Columbia. Mark Tobey's "white writing" canvases from the American Northwest also anticipated the all-over visual field that Pollock would later perfect.

Shifting the Center: Critics, Legacy, and What Came After

Abstract expressionism holds the distinction of being the first specifically American art movement to command genuine international influence, effectively transferring the crown of the Western art world from Paris to New York City. Two critics played outsized roles in cementing that shift. Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg championed the work of the New York School through their writing and personal collecting, with particular attention to Jackson Pollock. Rosenberg's formulation of the canvas as an "arena in which to act" became a defining conceptual framework for the action painters. Yet the movement's cultural dominance was short-lived; by the early 1960s its reign had clearly waned. The very emphasis on individualism that had defined abstract expressionism became the target of the next generation's rejection, giving rise to Pop art and Minimalism. Still, the movement's fingerprints remained visible throughout the second half of the twentieth century, surfacing in diverse currents across the United States and Europe, from Tachisme to Neo-expressionism, testifying to a creative vocabulary that refused to be confined to a single decade.