Term "Abstract Expressionism" was first used in Germany in connection with Rusian artist Wassily Kandinsky in 1919 (referencing the German Expressionists with their anti-figurative aesthetic), but later became more commonly associated with Post-WWII American Art.

1. Abstract Expressionism
Meenal Mandil

2. When and where did the movement start?
 Abstract Expressionism is a term applied to a movement in American painting after
the World War II in 1945.
 It is an art movement which started in New York city and hence also known as New
York School.
 The term "Abstract Expressionism" was first used in Germany in connection with
Rusian artist Wassily Kandinsky in 1919 (referencing the German Expressionists with
their anti-figurative aesthetic), but later became more commonly associated with
Post-WWII American Art.
 Robert Coates (an American art critic) later popularized the term Abstract
Expressionism by applying it to similar artists like Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock
and Willem de Kooning.

3. A New Art for a New World
 Political conflicts in Europe caused by World War II forced many European Artists
to emigrate to United States, bringing with them their own traditions and ideas.
 Artists like Clyfford Still, were so disillusioned by the horrors of war that they chose
to eschew traces of European tradition altogether.
 As Barnett Newman said, “After the monstrosity of the war, what do we do? What is
there to paint? We have to start all over again.”

4. Clyfford Still’s Painting
1. An uneven background of black is
interrupted by a few jagged fissures
of red, yellow, and white.
2. Irregularly textured surface.
3. Rejected any figurative
interpretations of his work.
4. “I paint only myself, not nature.” He
said.
5. Wanted to obliterate any connection
to the European tradition of painting.
6. “Pigment on canvas,” he wrote, “has a
way of initiating conventional
reactions.
In 1944-N, No. 2

5. Lee Cranser’s Painting
1. Untitled is part of a series from the late
1940s called Little Images.
2. Krasner made these paintings—none
larger than three feet—while working on
a tabletop in her bedroom.
3. Applied thick paint using repetitive
strokes, often squeezing paint straight
out of the tube.
4. The resulting composition was an
allover, gridlike structure filled with
markings that look like symbols or
letters.
5. Krasner had studied Hebrew as a child,
but as an adult she no longer could read
or write the language.
6. Formally, she likened the indecipherable
symbols in these paintings to Hebrew
but insisted that she was interested in
creating a language of private symbols
that did not relate to one specific
meaning.
Lee Kranser Untitled

6. Adolph Gottlieb’s Painting
1. In Man Looking at Woman, He uses a
palette of earthy colors and
compartmentalizes hieroglyphic-like
forms into rectangular areas.
2. The artist called this and similar
works Pictographs, a series he started in
1941.
3. Symbols could not be read, but they
served as a personal vocabulary from
which Gottlieb developed his work.
4. He shared with surrealist an interest in
mining the subconscious.
5. By drawing upon ancient sources and
so-called “primitive” art, Gottlieb hoped
to create work that had universal
resonance, especially in the wake of the
atrocities of war.
Man Looking at Woman

7. Barnett Newman’s Sculpture
1. Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk,
made of Cor-Ten steel, stands over
25 feet tall and weighs 6,000 pounds.
2. An inverted obelisk—a four-sided
tapering monument from Ancient
Egypt—balances precariously atop a
pyramid, another Egyptian form.
3. No resemblance with history.
4. Some interpret Broken Obelisk as a
universal monument to all humanity.
5. An allusion to the social unrest of the
civil rights movement and Vietnam
War protests occurring in the United
States in the 1960s
Broken Obelisk

8. Introduction about the techniques
 Abstract Expressionism is a type of art in which the artist expresses himself purely
through the use of form and color. It uses non-representational, or non-objective,
art, which means that there are no actual objects represented.
 In this art movement, artists typically applied paint rapidly and with force to their
huge canvases in an effort to show feelings and emotions.
 Now considered to be the first American artistic movement of international
importance, the term was originally used to describe the work of Willem de
Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky.
 Abstract Expressionism is best known for large-scale paintings that break away
from traditional processes, often taking the canvas off of the easel and using
unconventional materials such as house paint.

9. Types of Painting in this art movement
 The movement can be more or less divided into two groups: Action Painting,
typified by artists such as Pollock, de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Philip Guston,
stressed the physical action involved in painting; Color Field Painting, practiced
by Mark Rothko and Kenneth Noland, among others, was primarily concerned with
exploring the effects of pure color on a canvas.

10. Jackson Pollock
“My painting does not come from the
easel. I prefer to tack the un stretched
canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need
the resistance of a hard surface. On the
floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer,
more part of the painting, since this way I
can walk around it, work from the four
sides, and literally be in the painting. ” He
quoted.

11. Painting Style
• turning to synthetic resin-based paints
called alkyd enamels, which were
much more fluid than traditional paint
and, at that time, were a
novel medium.
• hardened brushes, sticks, and even
basting syringes as paint applicators.
• apply paint to his canvases from all
directions—the term "all-over
painting" has been used to describe
some of his work
• He moved away from figurative
representation, and challenged the
Western tradition of using easel and
brush.
Autumn Rhythm No. 30, Jackson Pollock, 1950.

12. Mark Rothko
• Mark Rothko’s technique of painting
departs from Pollock’s actions.
Rothko’s style is called colorfield
painting.
• His works consist of strong formal
elements, such as color, shape,
balance, depth, composition, and
scale.
• Rothko’s early palette consists of
bright colors.
• Ideally, the viewer would stand in
front of his paintings, focusing on
large fields of color and abstract
forms, and come to terms with the self
and his or her own scale.
• Colorfield painters believe that art
could encourage the physical
sensation of time and being there with
the work.
Blue, Yellow, Green on Red, Mark Rothko, 1954

13. Abstract Expressionist
Sculpture
Abstract Expressionism is often thought of as
a revolution in painting, but the movement
also included several sculptors whose work
challenged traditional conventions of
the medium.
David Smith made open structures that
defied the heavy mass and volume usually
associated with sculpture.
Smith made primarily sculpture, but he was
trained as a painter and worked in the same
circles as many Abstract Expressionist
painters. Like a two-dimensional painting,
this work is best viewed from one side.
Like their peers, sculptors also turned to
unconventional and often scavenged
materials, as well as less-common processes,
such as welding.

14. Abstract Expressionist Artists in New York
City
 Abstract Expressionism marked the beginning of New York City’s influence as the
center of the western art world.
 The world of the Abstract Expressionist artists was firmly rooted in Lower
Manhattan. A walk along 8th Street would take you from the Waldorf Cafeteria,
where penniless artists made “tomato soup” from the free hot water and ketchup;
past the Hans Hofmann School of Fine artists founded by the painter of the same
name; to The Club, a loft where lectures and heated arguments about art carried on
late into the night. Jackson Pollock’s studio was on East 8th Street, Willem de
Kooning’s and Philip Guston’s were on East 10th, and although Franz Kline moved
among various homes and studios in the area, most nights found him and many of
his contemporaries at the Cedar Street Tavern on University Place.

15.  Having matured as artists at a time when America suffered economically and felt
culturally isolated and provincial, the Abstract Expressionists were later welcomed as the
first authentically American avant-garde.
 Their art was championed for being emphatically American in spirit - monumental in
scale, romantic in mood, and expressive of a rugged individual freedom.
 The milieu of Abstract Expressionism united sculptors such as David Smith as well as
photographers like Aaron Siskind, but above all the movement was one of painters.
 Through exploration of gesture, line, shape, and color, many artists hoped to evoke
strong emotional reactions.
 Their grand scale created an overwhelming and, for some, almost religious viewing
experience.

16. Abstract Expressionism and the Sublime
 Some critics considered Abstract Expressionism’s interest in the sublime to be a
continuation of the ideals of the Romantics. Romanticism was an artistic and literary
movement from the late 17th century and early 18th century that placed emphasis
on the aesthetic experience and the emotions it evoked. In 1948, Newman wrote an
essay titled “The Sublime is Now,” in which he asserts that America is where artists
are finally achieving the sublime: “Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man,
or ‘life,’ we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.

17. Abstraction in Architecture
 The relationship between abstract art and Modernist architecture was particularly
strong in the early twentieth century. Many painters paid homage to architectural
principles in their abstract compositions. Some, such as Kazimir Malevich in works
he called architectonics, went so far as to experiment with three-dimensional
extrapolations of ideas first explored in paintings.

18. Abstraction in Photography
Pursuing what he called the new vision an
art appropriate to the modern age
Moholy-Nagy produced abstract works in
various mediums, including painting,
sculpture, film, design, and photography.
His sustained interest in light, space, and
motion led him to make photograms,,
Moholy-Nagy produced ethereal traces of
an object s form and its movement across
the paper, while disguising its original
identity.
He created the impression of three-
dimensional form by varying the density
of lights and darks across the image
surface, a technique he could also use to
make an object appear either transparent
or opaque.

19. The Role of the Critics
 Other people, such as British comedian/satirist Craig Brown, have been astonished
that decorative 'wallpaper' could gain such a position in art history alongside
Giotto, Titian and Velazquez.

20. Russian Business School
Russian Business School Skolkovo - analog of Silicon Valley, August 20, 2012, Moscow, Russia. Paintingof Kazimir Malevich is at
heart of architectural project SKOLKOVO Campus.

21. Thank You