Background

The Abstract Expressionism art movement was developed in America during the 1940’s up to the early 1960’s. According to Spilsbury, “Abstract Expressionism is the name given to an important movement in art. It happened in the United States, especially in New York City. The movement lasted roughly from the mid-1940s to the early 1960s and, during this time, it was probably the most up-to-date and experimental, or avant-garde, American art” (Spilsbury, pg. 4). The Abstract Expressionism movement was uniquely American. According to a web source, “Abstract Expressionism was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and also put New York City at the center of the art world, a role formerly filled by Paris” (The Art History Archive). The Abstract Expressionism art movement was the first American art movement to achieve global influence. According to Richard Spilsbury, “A movement in art can be when many artists paint in a similar style. For example, Pointillism was an art movement in Paris from the 1880s, when artists such as Paul Signac painted pictures made up from dots of paint. However, Abstract Expressionism is an art movement that includes a very wide variety of painting styles: for example, splatters and pools of paint produced by Jackson Pollock, distorted people created in bold, colorful brushstrokes by Willem de Kooning, and large panels of just one or two colors by Mark Rothko. What made Abstract Expressionist artists similar to each other was their ideas about art” (Spilsbury, pg. 4). What separated the Abstract Expressionism art movement and other previous art movements is that it incorporated many different styles of artwork within the movement. The Abstract Expressionists did not necessarily share the same art techniques but had the same artistic ideology. They wanted to express themselves through their artwork.

The term Abstract Expressionism was used before the 1940’s American art movement. According to Spilsbury, “The term Abstract Expressionism was used to describe art quite a long time before Pollock and Rothko. In 1919, and in 1929, it was used to describe several painting including Wassily Kandinsky , a Russian avant-guarde painter. However, it was in 1946 that the term was used for an art movement involving a group of artists. Art critic Robert Coates was describing paintings by Hans Hofman, which he said were ‘what some people have called the spatter-and-daub school of painting and I, more politely, have called Abstract Expressionism’” (Splisbury, pg. 4). The term was later used by Robert Coates and other critics to describe the work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and other Abstract Expressionist artists. According to a web source, “The term “Abstract Expressionism” was also difficult to understand. Harold Rosenburg preferred the phrase “Action Painting” and art critic Clement Greenberg preferred “American Type Painting”. Because of the concentration of Abstract Expressionism artists in New York it was also known as the New York School” (Art History Archive). The Abstract Expressionism artwork was called many things early on due to the diversity of art and many times non-representational artwork within the movement.