Abstract Expressionism Abstract Expressionism is a post-World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York in the 1940s.

Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell The American painter and printmaker Robert Motherwell was part of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, which also encompassed a range of other artists including Mark Rothko (1903-70), Barnett Newman (1905-70), Philip Guston (1913-80) and Willem de Kooning (1904-97). Stylistically Motherwell was highly changeable, and explored several different modern art movements, including Cubism, Collage, Primitivism, Surrealism and Minimalism. Although attracted to abstract art from the beginning, his work contains traces of figuration, as well as an intellectual narrative inspired by history, philosophy and personal biography. Motherwell began by studying philosophy at Harvard before taking up painting. Unlike the shy Rothko, Motherwell was highly communicative: in addition to a prolific painting career he also wrote essays and books which discussed non-objective art. Switching from oil to acrylic painting in the 1960s, he often painted large areas of canvas in his distinctive blue or black. His long- running series of abstract paintings, entitled Elegy to the Spanish Republic are considered to be his most important work, although he is also noted for his collage art and prints. He is regarded as one of the finest narrator-type abstract painters, and one of the great modern artists of the American school.

Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko One of the most innovative figures in abstract art in America during the mid-20th century, the Latvian-born, Jewish-American painter, Mark Rothko (Marcus Rothkowitz) was the leading pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, a movement triggered by the collapse in moral values following World War II. Along with Clyfford Still (1904-80) and Barnett Newman (1905-70) he became a leading member of the New York School and pioneer of Colour Field Painting, Rothko's key works include: Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea (1944, MOMA); Multiform (1948, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra); Untitled (Violet, Black, Orange, Yellow on White and Red) (1949, Guggenheim Museum, New York); Green and Maroon (1953, Phillips Collection, Washington DC); Untitled (Purple, White and Red) (1953, Art Institute of Chicago); and Light Red over Black (1957, Tate Gallery, London). Now ranked among the giants of modern American Art, Rothko is regarded as one of the greatest abstract painters the 20th century. His colour-saturated abstract paintings - some of which are available online in the form of poster art - influenced many of the younger generation of modern artists including Frank Stella (b.1936), Helen Frankenthaler (b.1928), Kenneth Noland (b.1924) and others, and paved the way for movements like Hard-edge painting and other 1960s styles of Post-Painterly Abstraction.

Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning A giant of 20th century American art who occupied the area between abstract art and representationalism, the Dutch-born artist Willem de Kooning was the most consistent and longest-living contributor to the postwar Abstract Expressionism movement, and an iconic figure in avant-garde art. Famous for his brutal brushwork, impasto textures and clashing colours, he exemplified the ”gestural painting" style of the New York School, along with other abstract artists like Franz Kline (1910-62), Jackson Pollock (1912-56) and Lee Krasner (1908-84), the founders of “action painting”. His most famous works are his paintings of women, such as Woman I (1950-2, Museum of Modern Art, New York), one of a series of six numbered 'Woman' paintings. He was first drawn to the depiction of women because he wanted to engage with what he perceived was a longstanding tradition dating back to Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538, Uffizi, Florence). These 'women' pictures illustrated his desire to maintain an overtly figurative element in his painting, in contrast to the gesturalist Pollock, as well as the wholly abstract Colour Field Painting group of Clyfford Still (1904-80), Mark Rothko (1903-70), and Barnett Newman (1905-70), the versatile Robert Motherwell (1915-91), the lyrical "Abstract Impressionist" Philip Guston (1913-80) and the "Hard-Edge" painter Frank Stella (b.1936).

Lee Krasner

Lee Krasner The renowned American painter Lee Krasner was an influential figure in American art - notably, the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. Her early works were representational but by 1940 she was exhibiting with the American Abstract Artists and gaining a reputation as a younger-generation modernist. In 1941 she met Jackson Pollock (1912-56) and soon began a tumultuous relationship. They married in 1945 and separated shortly before Pollock's death. They began by exhibiting together, and Krasner became an important source of support for Pollock whose work reflected his fluctuant moods, swinging from supreme confidence to dismal depression. Although she received some early distinction, it was only after her husband's death that she began to receive serious critical acclaim. Her mature works frequently included collage, using fragments of her own drawings. Key works from her career include Composition (1940-43, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC); Gothic Landscape (1961, Tate Modern, London); Mysteries (1972, The Brooklyn Museum of Art); The Seasons (1957, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) and Rising Green (1972, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Her Little Image series which she began in 1946 incorporated dots and drips of paint which inspired Pollock's now famous ”action painting” of the same period.

Clifford Still

Clifford Still A pioneer of abstract art, the North Dakota-born American painter Clyfford Still was one of the leading figures in the New York School of avant-garde Abstract Expressionism, which took root in the 1940s and became the predominant style of painting until its replacement by Pop art during the mid-1960s. Associated in particular with the school of Colour Field Painting, which he co-founded with Mark Rothko (1903-70), and Barnett Newman (1905-70), Clyfford Still typically worked on a very large scale, his signature style being a jagged form, in heavy impasto, silhouetted in dramatic contrast against a broad, even plane of colour. In simple terms, he was the only painter to combine the luminosity of Colour Field painting with the dynamic gesturalism of Action Painting.

Franz Kline

Franz Kline One of the most individualistic exponents of Abstract Expressionism, the Anglo-German American Kline is best known for his large-scale black and white abstract paintings, occasionally reminiscent of calligraphy. Starting out as a conventional representational painter, he turned to abstract art in his late 30s, partly under the influence of the great gesturalist Willem de Kooning (1904-97). Kline's stark but highly personal pictures made him something of a heroic figure within the New York School of modern art, and along with De Kooning he pioneered much of the rhetoric of Abstract Expressionism. Later he included colour in his painting, but most of his work is monochrome. His most famous works include Chief (1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York), White Forms (1955, MoMA), Mahoning (1956, Whitney Museum of American Art), Black Reflections (1959, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Orange and Black Wall (1959, Thyssen Collection, Amsterdam). Ranked by art critics alongside the greatest gestural abstract painters of the 1950s, such as Robert Motherwell (1915- 91), Jackson Pollock (1912-56), Adolph Gottlieb (1903-74) and De Kooning, he remains an icon of American art.