Abstract expressionism

David Smith, Cubi VI (1963), Israel Museum, Jerusalem. David Smith was one of the most influential American sculptors of the 20th century.
Barnett Newman, Onement 1, 1948. During the 1940s Barnett Newman wrote several articles about the new American painting.
Richard Pousette-Dart, Symphony No. 1, The Transcendental, 1941–42
Arshile Gorky, The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944), oil on canvas, 73 × 98" (186 × 249 cm) Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on abstract expressionism. De Kooning said: "I met a lot of artists — but then I met Gorky... He had an extraordinary gift for hitting the nail on the head; remarkable. So I immediately attached myself to him and we became very good friends."
Boon by James Brooks, 1957, Tate Gallery
William Baziotes, Cyclops, 1947, oil on canvas, Chicago Art Institute. Baziotes' abstract expressionist works show the influence of Surrealism
Jean-Paul Riopelle, 1951, Untitled, oil on canvas, 54 x 64.7 cm (21 1/4 x 25 1/2 in.), private collection
Richard Stankiewicz, Detail of Figure; 1956; steel, iron, and concrete; in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Alexander Calder, Red Mobile, 1956, Painted sheet metal and metal rods, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
John Chamberlain, S, 1959, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC.
Isamu Noguchi, The Cry, 1959, Kröller-Müller Museum Sculpture Park, Otterlo, Netherlands
Louise Bourgeois, Maman, 1999, outside Museo Guggenheim

Post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s.

- Abstract expressionism

500 related topics

Relevance

Barnett Newman

American artist.

Newman c. 1969
Onement 1, 1948. Museum of Modern Art, New York. The first example of Newman using the so-called "zip" to define the spatial structure of his paintings
Broken Obelisk in the University of Washington's Red Square
Broken Obelisk, Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas

He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.

Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky in December 1936
Arshile Gorky's The Artist and His Mother (ca. 1926–1936), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City.
Arshile Gorky's Portrait of Master Bill, 1929–1936. Oil on canvas.
Arshile Gorky working on Activities on the field, one of the panels for his mural Aviation at Newark Airport, for the Federal Art Project, 1936
Arshile Gorky. The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944), oil on canvas, 73 × 98" (186 × 249 cm), Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. The painting represents the peak of Gorky's achievement and his individual style, after he had emerged from the influence of Cézanne and Picasso.
A 2020 stamp sheet of Armenia featuring Gorky and his paintings Untitled (1944), Abstraction (1936), Landscape-Table (1945) and Untitled (1941)

Arshile Gorky (born Vostanik Manoug Adoian, Ոստանիկ Մանուկ Ատոյեան; April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian-American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism.

Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell, Ulysses, 1947, oil paint on cardboard and wood construction, Tate Modern
Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110, 1971, acrylic with pencil and charcoal on canvas, 82 x 114 inches, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Robert Motherwell, Untitled, oil on canvas, 1963, Honolulu Museum of Art
Robert Motherwell, Gray Open with White Paint, 1981, soft-ground etching and pochoir on gray Auvergne à la Main handmade paper, 20¼ × 26¼ in

Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American abstract expressionist painter, printmaker, and editor.

Mark Rothko

American abstract painter of Latvian Jewish descent.

Rothko in 1959 (age 55)
Rothko's studio on 153 East 69th Street in New York's Upper East Side

Although Rothko did not personally subscribe to any one school, he is associated with the American Abstract Expressionist movement of modern art.

Willem de Kooning

De Kooning in his studio in 1961
Willem de Kooning (1968)
Woman III, 1953, private collection
De Kooning as sculptor: Seated Woman on a Bench, bronze of 1972 (cast 1976), in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist.

Color field

Style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s.

Kenneth Noland, Beginning, 1958, magna on canvas painting, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Working in Washington, D.C., Noland was a pioneer of the color field movement in the late 1950s.
Henri Matisse, Porte-fenêtre à Collioure (French Window at Collioure), 1914, Centre Georges Pompidou, "Throughout my life, the 20th-century painter whom I've admired the most has been Matisse", Robert Motherwell 1970.
Jack Bush, Big A, 1968. Bush was a Canadian abstract expressionist painter, born in Toronto, Ontario in 1909. He became closely tied to the two movements that grew out of the efforts of the abstract expressionists: color field painting and lyrical abstraction.
Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park No.129, 1984. The Ocean Park series connects his earlier abstract expressionist works with Color field painting. The influence of both Henri Matisse and Joan Miró is particularly strong in this painting.
Henri Matisse, View of Notre-Dame, 1914, Museum of Modern Art. The Matisse paintings French Window at Collioure and View of Notre Dame both from 1914 exerted tremendous influence on American color field painters in general (including Robert Motherwell's Open Series) and on Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park paintings specifically.

It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to abstract expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering abstract expressionists.

Mark Tobey

American painter.

Tobey in 1964
Canticle, casein on paper, 1954
Mark Tobey in 1964
Thanksgiving Leaf, aquatint, 1971

His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophically from most Abstract Expressionist painters.

Action painting

Style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied.

The Mona Lisa (1503–1517) by Leonardo da Vinci is one of the world's most recognizable paintings.

The style was widespread from the 1940s until the early 1960s, and is closely associated with abstract expressionism (some critics have used the terms "action painting" and "abstract expressionism" interchangeably).

André Masson

French artist.

André Masson.Pedestal Table in the Studio (1922)
André Masson. Automatic Drawing (1924). Ink on paper, 9 × 8" (23.5 × 20.6 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Living in New Preston, Connecticut his work became an important influence on American abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock.

Agnes Martin

Canadian-born American abstract painter.

Martin in her studio, 1954

Although she is often considered or referred to as a minimalist, Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist.