Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was the dominant movement in American painting and sculpture in the late 1940s and the 1950s. It was characterized by a desire to convey powerful emotions through the sensuous qualities of paint, bold gestures, physicality and spontaneity of process, heroic scale, and the introspection of the artist, often on canvases of huge size.

The style is most closely associated with a generation of New York painters—New York School abstract expressionism—of the 1940s and 1950s who studied under European modernists (such as Wasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Max Ernst) who fled to America in the face of fascism.

According to Alfred H. Barr, Jr]., Abstract expressionism anticipated in various ways by van Gogh, Monet, Redon, and Matisse but firmly established by Kandinsky about 1912.

Prominent abstract expressionists:

• Jackson Pollock,
• Willem de Kooning,
• Mark Rothko,
• Barnett Newman
• Clifford Still