Abstract Expressionism

A postwar art movement centered in New York, known for large-scale abstract works emphasizing spontaneous gesture, expressive mark-making, or fields of color.

Jackson Pollock: An American painter known for pouring and dripping paint onto canvases laid on the floor. His poured paintings became the movement’s most recognizable example of gestural abstraction.
Action painting: A style of painting that foregrounds the physical act of applying paint as part of the work’s meaning. It names the gestural approach associated with Pollock and de Kooning.
New York School: A loose circle of mid-century artists, poets, and musicians associated with experimental culture in New York. Abstract Expressionism emerged from this wider creative network rather than from a formal organization.
Socialist realism: A state-promoted art style that depicts workers and society in idealized, politically approved forms. Its prescribed subjects and legible imagery contrast with Abstract Expressionism’s nonrepresentational freedom.
New York City: The largest city in the United States and a major center of finance, media, and the arts. The movement helped establish the city as a leading center of postwar modern art.
Willem de Kooning: A Dutch-American painter whose gestural abstractions often retained fragments of recognizable figures. His Woman paintings show how forceful abstraction could incorporate the human figure.
Color-field painting: A style of abstraction built from broad areas of color with limited gesture or imagery. It distinguishes Rothko’s expanses of color from action painting’s energetic marks.
Surrealism: An artistic and literary movement that explored dreams, the unconscious, and unexpected combinations. Surrealist ideas about automatism and the unconscious influenced several painters in the movement.
Regionalism (American art): An American art movement depicting rural life and local identity, especially during the 1930s. Its recognizable national scenes differ from the movement’s abstract forms and international outlook.
MoMA: The Museum of Modern Art in New York, founded in 1929 and devoted to modern and contemporary art. Its exhibitions and collections helped institutionalize the movement’s standing.

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