Abstract Expressionism

Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York in the years immediately following the Second World War and quickly became one of the most powerful and influential movements in the history of modern art. Building on developments in European avant-garde art of the preceding decades, a wave of artists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still developed a new abstraction that was simultaneously elemental and sophisticated. Though several of Abstract Expressionism's key figures were emigres, including Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann and Arshile Gorky, it was art's first definitively American movement, establishing New York as the new capital of artistic innovation for years to come while creating a visual language that would soon reach to the farthest corners of the globe.