Abstract Art is a wide movement in American painting that came up during the late 1940s and became a preferred trend in Western painting in the 50s. The top American Abstract Expressionist painters were Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko. Some others included Clyfford Still, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Lee Krasner, Bradley Walker Tomlin, William Baziotes, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, Elaine de Kooning, and Jack Tworkov. The majority of these worked, lived, or had galleries in New York City.

Although it is the general designation, Abstract Expressionism is not the most apt name of the body of work created by the aforementioned artists. Actually, the movement consisted of several different painterly styles that changed in both technical application and quality of expression. Despite this variety, Abstract Expressionist paintings possess a number of general elements. They are primarily abstract — in effect, they show forms not drawn from the visible world.

They furthermore proffer limitless, spontaneous, and individual emotional expression, and they display high freedom of skill and procedure to achieve this result, with emphasis targeted on the exploitation of the changeable physical form of paint to create expressive qualities (such as, sensuousness, dynamism, violence, mystery, lyricism). They exhibit likewise importance on the unstudied and intuitive application of the paint in a sort of psychological improvisation akin to the automatism of the Surrealists, with the likewise intent of displaying the power of the creative unconscious in art. They demonstrate the abandonment of conventionally structured composition taken in discrete and segregable effects and their replacement with a unique and unified, undifferentiated area, network, or other image that exists in unstructured space. Finally, the paintings fill large canvases to allow the aforementioned visual elements both monumentality and engrossing power.

The premier Abstract Expressionists had two particular forerunners: Arshile Gorky, who painted suggestive biomorphic figures in a free, delicately linear and liquid paint technique; and Hans Hofmann, who created dynamic and fully textured brushwork in his abstract but conventionally constructed works. Another significant influence on nascent Abstract Expressionism was the arrival on the US shores in the late 30s and early 40s of a group of Surrealists and other important European avant-garde artists fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe. Those avant-garde artists quickly influenced the native New York City painters and gave them a more detailed view of the vanguard of European painting. The Abstract Expressionist movement itself is usually considered as having started with the pieces mastered by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning during the late forties and early 50s.

With regard to the diversity of technique in the Abstract Expressionist movement, three broad approaches can be seen. One was action painting which is signified by a loose, quickfire, dynamic, or forceful handling of paint in sweeping or slashing brushstrokes, and in application in large part dictated by chance, i.e. dripping or spilling paint openly onto the canvas. Pollock initially practiced action painting by dripping commercial paints on raw canvas building up multilayered and tangled skeins of paint into exciting and suggestive linear patterns. De Kooning used very vigorous and expressive brushstrokes building richly coloured and textured images. Kline used mighty, sweeping black strokes on a white canvas creating starkly monumental forms.

The middle approach of Abstract Expressionism is exhibited by many varied styles starting from the lightly lyrical, delicate imagery and fluid shapes of paintings by Guston and Frankenthaler to the more clearly structured, forceful, almost calligraphic pictures of Motherwell and Gottlieb.

The last and least emotionally expressive area was that of Rothko, Newman, and Reinhardt. These painters used large areas or fields of flat colour and thin diaphanous paint to master quiet, subtle, almost meditative outcomes. The top colour-field painter was Rothko; most of his artworks consist of wide combinations of soft-edged, solidly coloured rectangular blocks that tend to shine and resonate.

Abstract Expressionism had a wide influence on both the American and European art styles throughout the fifties. Indeed, the movement denoted the change of the creative centre of modern day painting from Paris to New York City during the postwar era. Throughout the time of the fifties, the younger followers of the movement increasingly took to the leadership of the colour-field painters. By the 60s, these participants had mostly moved away from the great expressiveness of the action painters.

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