Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depression and Mexican muralists. The term was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates. Key figures in the New York School, which was the center of this movement, included such artists as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Norman Lewis, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Theodoros Stamos, Jack Tworkov, and Lee Krasner among others. The movement was not limited to painting but included influential collagists and sculptors, such as David Smith, Louise Nevelson, and others. Abstract expressionism was notably influenced by the spontaneous and subconscious creation methods of Surrealist artists like André Masson and Max Ernst. Artists associated with the movement combined the emotional intensity of German Expressionism with the radical visual vocabularies of European avant-garde schools like Futurism, the Bauhaus, and Synthetic Cubism. Artist Paul Hultberg was noted as an innovator, producing large scale abstract expressionist murals using the unconventional medium of vitreous enamel on copper and steel, typically reserved for more diminutive works of jewelry and smaller plaques. He developed his own method for open air firing the enameled panels that were typically too large for kilns. Abstract expressionism was seen as rebellious and idiosyncratic, encompassing various artistic styles. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the Western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris. Contemporary art critics played a significant role in its development. Critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg promoted the work of artists associated with abstract expressionism, in...