ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM  (1946-1956)
Abstract Expressionism was the first American art style to exert an influence on a global scale. It drew upon the ‘spiritual’ approach of Kandinsky, the 'automatism' of the Surrealists, and a range of dramatic painting techniques. Abstract Expressionism was also known as ‘Action Painting’, a title which implied that the physical act of painting was as important as the result itself.
The Abstract Expressionist movement embraced paintings from a wide range of artists whose work was not always purely abstract or truly expressionistic. The ‘all-over’ drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, which entangle the viewer in a skein of light, color and texture, were the biggest challenge to the interpretation of pictorial space since Cubism. The paintings of Mark Rothko bathe the spectator in a mystical world of diffuse color while the art of Robert Motherwell sets up an abstract dialogue between his 'automatic' calligraphy and the conscious control of shapes and colors.

JACKSON POLLOCK  (1912-1956)
Pollock was introduced to the use of liquid paint in 1936 at an experimental workshop in New York City by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. In 1945 Pollock married American painter Lee Krasner. With the help of a down-payment loaned by Peggy Guggenheim, they bought a wood-frame house and barn in East Hampton on the south shore of Long Island. In that space, Pollock began painting with his canvases laid out on the studio floor and soon perfected his big "drip" technique, the style he became permanently identified with.

MARK ROTHKO  (1903-1970)

“Blue Divided by Blue”  (1966)
Untitled (Blue Divided by Blue) is a rare painting by Rothko, believed to be one of only four recorded works on paper.  Until 1970, Rothko had been exploring the limit of painting on paper.  Painted in a period of depression, Blue Divided by Blue has been described as one of Rothko’s most serene-looking paintings.  In 2007, “Blue” sold for $4.5M.

WILLEM DE KOONING  (1904-1997)

ROBERT MOTHERWELL  (1915-1991)
Elegy to the Spanish Republic of a series comprising more than 140 paintings, which Motherwell worked on throughout his long career. The series functioned as the artist's memorial to the Spanish Civil War, an event that had come to symbolize for him the human tragedies of oppression and injustice.  What exactly the ovoid and bar-like forms are intended to mean has been the subject of great debate. Some compare them to architecture, or to ancient monuments, while others read them as phalluses and wombs which suggest the cycle of life and death.
From 1958 to 1971 Motherwell was married to abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler. On Motherwell's death, Clement Greenberg commented that, "although he is underrated today, in my opinion he was one of the very best of the Abstract Expressionist painters".

 JAMES BROOKS (1906-1992)

MORRIS LOUIS  (1912-1962)

HANS HOFMANN (1880-1966)

FRANZ KLINE  (1910-1962)

JACK TWORKOV  (1900-1982)

 
HELEN FRANKENTHALER (1928-2011)

ADOLPH GOTTLIEB  (1903-1974)

MARK DI SUVERO  (1933-Present)

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