Abstract Expressionism was a movement in painting that emerged in New York in the 1940s and dominated advanced American art through the 1950s, the first internationally influential movement in Western painting to originate in the United States rather than Europe. It grouped painters working in sharply different manners under one banner: gestural, all-over painters such as Jackson Pollock, working directly on canvas laid flat on the floor, and Willem de Kooning, whose vigorous, often figurative brushwork retained a violent painterly energy; and color field painters such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, who built large, meditative canvases from broad expanses of saturated color rather than gesture. What united the two strands was scale, ambition and a claim that abstract painting could carry the same weight of feeling and meaning previously claimed only for representational art. The movement's rise to international prominence during the early Cold War has itself become a subject of historical dispute: the mainstream account credits the work's own formal daring, while a documented dissenting account holds that American cultural diplomacy programs, including covertly CIA-linked touring exhibitions organized in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art, actively promoted Abstract Expressionism abroad during the 1950s as evidence of Western artistic freedom against Soviet Socialist Realism.
Facts
Founded In PlaceNew York City, United States 1 Key PrincipleLarge-scale abstract painting, whether gestural or color-field, treated as a vehicle for genuine feeling and meaning rather than decoration or formal experiment alone 1 Disputed
End YearHistorians differ on when the movement effectively ended as a dominant force; 1960 marks its eclipse by Pop Art and Minimalism in critical attention, though several core painters continued working in the idiom for years afterward. Connections
Expressed In
Movement Members
Source Gardner's Art Through the AgesFred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner)
Second-generation Abstract Expressionist, pioneer of the soak-stain technique.
Source Gardner's Art Through the AgesFred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner)
Core Abstract Expressionist painter.
Core Abstract Expressionist painter.
Began as a core Abstract Expressionist painter.
Core Abstract Expressionist painter.
Woman I, Works De Kooning's Woman series is a landmark Abstract Expressionist work.
Sources
1. Gardner's Art Through the Ages
Fred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner), Cengage Learning- chapter on Abstract Expressionism
- Movement Members: Jackson Pollock, chapter on Abstract Expressionism, section on Jackson Pollock
- Movement Members: Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), chapter on Abstract Expressionism, section on Jackson Pollock
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
The mainstream account of Abstract Expressionism's rise to international prominence in the 1950s credits the work's own formal daring and the sheer critical force of writers such as Clement Greenberg, who championed it on aesthetic grounds alone. A documented dissenting account, developed at length by the art historian Serge Guilbaut in How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, holds that American cultural diplomacy programs, including touring exhibitions organized with cooperation from the Museum of Modern Art and covertly funded in part through the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom, actively promoted Abstract Expressionism abroad during the 1950s as evidence of Western artistic freedom in explicit contrast to Soviet Socialist Realism, a promotional effort Guilbaut argues shaped the movement's critical reception and international standing more than the purely formalist account acknowledges.
A dissenting reading, from an independent laneMuseum of Modern Art Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Abstract Expressionism secretly promoted by the CIA?
That is a genuinely documented historical dispute, not settled fact either way. The mainstream account credits the movement's international rise to its own formal daring. A separate, documented dissenting account holds that American cultural diplomacy programs, including touring exhibitions organized in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art that carried covert CIA links, actively promoted Abstract Expressionism abroad during the 1950s as evidence of Western artistic freedom against Soviet Socialist Realism. Both readings are recorded on this entity rather than only one.
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