Abstract Expressionism

“It is far better to capture the glorious spirit of the sea than to

paint all of its tiny ripples."

Jay Meuser 1911-1963California Abstract Expressionist

Wassily KandinskyComposition VII, 1913Oil on canvas 78.25 x 119.13 in

Piet MondrianComposition with Yellow, Blue and Red, 1937 – 1944Oil on canvas28.625 x 27.25 in

The dominant trend in western painting throughout the 1950s began with a handful of American artists later termed Abstract Expressionists. Their paintings were often made of shapes, lines, and forms not meant to depict a "reality" from the visible world. They believed that non-representational painting could express spiritual and emotional truths in the most direct way. These artists often used a spontaneous and physical process in order to present an immediate response to emotion.

Jackson PollockAutumn Rhythm No. 30, 1950Enamel on Canvas105 x 207 in.

Mark RothkoBlue, Yellow, Green on Red, 1954Oil on Canvas195.7 x 166.4 cm.

The Abstract Expressionists was a group of very different and individual artists, many of whom came together in New York’s Greenwich Village. Among the most famous were Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston and Robert Motherwell. While the wild physical "action" paintings of Jackson Pollock have come to represent the revolutionary mood of the times, a number of other painters played crucial roles in this movement. Mark Rothko’s enormous fields of color expressed both the spiritual and monumental concerns of the time. Willem de Kooning, who had taught at Black Mountain College, created work centered around aggressive applications of paint that, through free expressive brush strokes, created emotionally intense imagery. The giant canvases of Franz Kline and Clyfford Still concerned themselves primarily with human fragility.

Willem De KooningWoman and Bicycle, 1952-53Oil on Canvas76.5 x 49 in.

Lee KrasnerNight Creatures, 1965Acrylic on Paper30 x 42 in.

Barnett NewmanFirst Station, 1958Magna on Canvas78 x 60.5 in

The Abstract Expressionists addressed the great questions of human existence. The internal psychological struggle, the external struggle of man against nature, the spiritual quest for God -- these were topics that these artists felt needed to find expression in abstraction. For the Abstract Expressionists, understanding the process of painting meant understanding something at the core of the human desire to express oneself. In the end, making the process of painting an existential endeavor may have been their major achievement.

Grace HartiganIreland, 1958Oil on Canvas200 x 271 cm

Jose GuerreroSigns and Portents, 1956Oil on Canvas175.9 x 250.2 cm

"Inner necessity" is, for Kandinsky, the principle of art and the foundation of forms and the harmony of colours. He defines it as the principle of efficient contact of the form with the human soul.

Wassily KandinskyImprovisation 27, 1912Oil on Canvas47.5 x 55.25 in.

Abstract Expressionism encompasses a diverse range of postwar American painting that challenged the tradition of vertical easel painting. Beginning in the late 1940s, Pollock placed his canvases on the floor to pour, drip, and splatter paint onto them. This gestural act, with variations practiced by William Baziotes, De Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, and others, was termed “Action painting” by American critic Harold Rosenberg, who considered it a product of the artist’s unconscious outpouring or the enactment of some personal drama. The New York school, as these artists were called due to the city’s postwar transformation into an international nexus for vanguard art, expanded in the 1950s with the unique contributions of such painters as James Brooks and Hartigan, as well as energetic collagist-assemblers Conrad Marca-Relli and Robert Rauschenberg. Other painters eliminated the gestural stroke altogether. Mark Rothko used large planes of color, often to express universal human emotions and inspire a sense of awe