Expressionism of the 50’s

Abstract Expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an specifically American post-World War II art movement. It was the first American movement to achieve worldwide influence and also the one that put New York City at the center of the art world, a role formerly filled by Paris.
After WWII, with images of the Holocaust everywhere, it seemed redundant for socially-aware artists to paint these same images ... a photograph at the time was much more powerful. Artists began to explore color and shape and to paint an entire canvas orange or blue.
These works were produced in an extremely specific geographical setting and revealed a specific attitude. It was the result of the rivalry and dialogue between young American artists and the large community of European artists living in exile in New York. Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, and highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, rather nihilistic. It is seen as combining the emotional intensity and self-expression of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. The movement describe formal trend in American abstraction at the time. It can be broadly divided into two groups: Action Painting and Color Field and Hard-Edge Painting. It has its non-American parallels with similar aims (Art Informel, Cobra, Lyrical Abstraction).
By the 1960s, the movement had lost most of its impact, and was no longer so influential. Movements which were direct responses to, and rebellions against, abstract expressionism had begun, such as pop art and minimalism. However, many painters who had produced abstract expressionist work continued to work in that style for many years afterwards.

Action Painting(late 1940's - late 1950's)
One of the significant streams of Abstract Expressionism is the Action Painting. The term "Action Painting" was used for the first time in 1952 to describe the works of painters such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. The life energy and the psyche of the painter were at once the driving force, the resource and the meaning of these works. The canvas was seen as an arena. Painting became an irrational, instinctive and impulsive moment of existence. The Action Painting work thus turned into the form and trace of the living body, conveying split-second action and motion.

Color Field and Hard-Edge Painting (early 1960's)
Another significant stream of Abstract Expressionism is the Color Field and Hard-Edge Painting. The terms Color Field and Hard Edge describe two formal trends in American abstraction in the early 1960's. Color Field works consist of large colored areas; neither signs nor forms existed for the eye to latch on to. Color was used without any perspective device, producing a sensation of impressive size. The shades of color were usually diluted so as to sink into the canvas.
The expression Hard Edge appeared in the late 1950's to describe geometric abstract works, which emphasized colorful atmospheres and imprecise shapes. Hard Edge works were typified by their clearly defined outlines and edges and the precision and clarity of the compositions.

Art Informel

After WWII painters contemplated the legacy of geometric abstraction characterized in the early 20th century developments (through Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism, Constructivism and De Stijl) as a load and the cold intellectualism, out of touch with the post WWII reality of poverty and despair. Spontaneity and authenticity were more meaningful to a new generation of artists, then the clarity and functionality of De Stijl and other proponents of geometric abstraction.
From the reaction was born a new painting style which was fully abstract but didn't rely on intellectualist methodology. It was the result of the artist's emotional and physical engagement. The term Art Informel ("formless" art in French) was first used in early1950s by French art critic Michel Tapie to describe the works of an array of famous artists including Jean Dubuffet, Wols, Willem de Kooning, Jean Fautrier and Alberto Burri. It was a definition of a further development of abstraction that was seen as a radical break also with Modernism, toward something wholly "other."
The Informel artist was not interested in trying, at all cost, to have total control over the processes of artistic work. He emphasized spontaneity, irrationality, and freedom of form. He sought out "rebellious" tools and paints, capable of producing things accidental and unexpected. He strove to escape at any price a "prison" of the "well-made" traditional art works.
Lyrical Abstraction movement was contemporary to Art Informel and close with its approach. Some European abstract artists were associated with those both movements. The equivalent on the other side of Atlantic was similar in expressiveness, gesture and innovation - the Abstract Expressionism in America.

Art Brut

Art Brut ("Raw Art" or "Rough Art" in French) is a label created by French painter Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture. Dubuffet focused particularly on the art of the insane. The English term "Outsider Art", which is synonym for the Art Brut, is often applied more broadly, to include certain works of non-professional artists, who intentionally or not had created original art uninfluenced by the canon.
Interest in the art of insane asylum inmates had begun to grow in the 1920s. In 1921 Dr. Walter Morgenthaler published his monograph about Adolf Wölfli, a psychotic mental patient in his care. Wölfi had spontaneously taken up drawing, and this activity seemed to calm him. His most outstanding work is an illustrated epic of 45 volumes in which he narrates his own imaginary life story. With 25000 pages, 1600 illustrations, and 1500 collages it is a monumental work.
Dubuffet was particularly struck by Dr. Morgenthaler's publication and began his own collection of such art, which he called Art Brut or Raw Art. In 1948 he formed the Compagnie de l'Art Brut along with other artists including André Breton. The collection he established became known as the Collection de l'Art Brut. It contains thousands of works and is now permanently housed in Lausanne.
Dubuffet characterized Art Brut as: "Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses - where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere - are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professions. After a certain familiarity with these flourishing of an exalted feverishness, live so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade."
Dubuffet argued that 'culture' that is mainstream culture, managed to assimilate every new development in art, and by doing so took away whatever power it might have had. The result was to asphyxiate genuine expression. Art Brut was his solution to this problem - only Art Brut was immune to the influences of culture, immune to being absorbed and assimilated, because the artists themselves were not willing or able to be assimilated.

Cobra

Cobra was a post-World War II European avant-garde movement. The name was derived from the initials of the members' home cities: Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Copenhagen is the head, Brussels is the body, and Amsterdam is the tail of the Cobra.
The group's founders included Asger Jorn, the Dutch painter Constant, the Belgian poet Christian Dotremont and the painters Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Corneille and Carl-Henning Pedersen. Later on the group was expanded substantially.
In a Europe devastated by war, artists were eager to join forces, pool their thoughts and react to the inhumanity of a civilization based on reason and science. Cobra had a distinctive political and social dimension based on a criticism of the Cold War society of their day.
Cobra was formed from an amalgamation of the Dutch group Reflex, the Danish group Host and the Belgian Revolutionary Surrealist Group. Their fundamental values were nonconformity and spontaneity. Their inspiration was children's drawings, the alienated and folk art, motifs from Nordic mythology, Marxism. They rejected erudite art and all official art events. They sought to express combination of the Surrealist unconscious with the romantic forces of nature but unlike the former group they felt an abstract idiom better served that purpose. They were primary distinguished by a semiabstract expressive paintings style with brilliant color, violent brushwork, and distorted human figures.
Cobra was a milestone in the development of European Abstract Expressionism and was very similar to American Action Painting.

Lyrical Abstraction

Lyrical Abstraction is a French style of abstract painting current in the 1945 -1960. Very close to Art Informel, presents the European equivalent to Abstract Expressionism. The name Tachisme is sometimes used to describe the style.
In 1947 the painter Georges Mathieu organized the exhibition "Abstraction lyrique" in Paris. The term that Mathieu chose for the exhibition, pointing clearly to the gap separating "cold" geometric abstraction from a "hot" organic and lyrical form of abstraction. Works by Wols, Hartung and Riopelle were exhibited.
Wols produced painstaking, teeming graphic work that showed the influence of his contacts with the French Surrealists. Painting for Hartung meant streaking, hatching and brushing until the canvas was thoroughly invaded. He hid, disguised and erased an image until all that was left were the deletions. For Riopelle the picture itself involved no preconceived ideas. Painting was an instinctual act that let the work loom and emerge and decide for itself what its form would be.
When Mathieu resolved to exhibit the works of these painters, he incorporated his own approach as an artist, which was at once calligraphic and impulsive, within a European trend inspired by Surrealist automatism and the psychology of the unconscious.
Soulages, Atlan and Degottex were all very different from each other, formally speaking, but they can be regarded as belonging to this movement with its ill-defined outlines, which was developing at the very same time as American Abstract Expressionism. The US abstract painter Sam Francis was greatly influenced by the style.