Abstract expressionism emerged after World War II and emphasized spontaneous, energetic applications of paint and revealing the artist's process. The movement included action painting, where artists used techniques like dripping and flinging paint, and color field painting, characterized by large areas of flat color. Prominent abstract expressionists included Jackson Pollock, who developed drip painting, Willem de Kooning, known for figurative works, and Mark Rothko, whose paintings featured rectangular fields of color.

1. • "AbEx" (a.k.a. Action Painting or Color Field Painting; a.k.a. The New
York School) exploded onto the art scene after World War II with its
characteristic messiness and extremely energetic applications of paint.
• is also referred to as Gestural Abstraction, because its brush stokes
revealed the artist's process. This process is the subject of the art itself.
• The most prominent American Abstract Expressionist painters were
Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko.
• The key to understanding Abstract Expressionism is to understand
the concept of "deep" in 1950s slang. "Deep" meant not decorative, not
facile (superficial) and not insincere. Abstract Expressionists strove to
uncover their most personal feelings directly through making art, and
thereby achieve some transformation--or, if possible, some personal
redemption.
• Abstract Expressionism can be divided into two tendencies: Action
Painting and Color Field Painting.

2. • emphasizes the process of making art, often through a variety of techniques
that include dripping, dabbing, smearing, and even flinging paint on to the
surface of the canvas. These energetic techniques depend on broad gestures
directed by the artist's sense of control interacting with chance or random
occurrences. For this reason, Action Painting is also referred to as Gestural
Abstraction.

4. • Color Field is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color
spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken
surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on
gesture, brushstrokes and action in favour of an overall consistency of
form and process. In color field painting "color is freed from objective
context and becomes the subject in itself."

6. • Unconventional application of paint, usually without a
recognizable subject (de Kooning's Woman series is an
exception) that tends toward amorphous shapes in
brilliant colors.
• Dripping, smearing, slathering, and flinging lots of paint
on to the canvas (often an unprimed canvas).
• Sometimes gestural "writing" in a loosely calligraphic
manner.
• In the case of Color Field artists: carefully filling the
picture plane with zones of color that create tension
between the shapes and hues.

7. Jackson Pollock
• In his short life - during which the only constant
factor was his fight against "authority" - Jackson
Pollock created a technique called "drip painting",
which liberated him from mixing colors or
requiring brushes. He'd lay his (enormous)
canvases, unstretched, right on the floor of his
workshop. This gave him the ability to move all
around his work, dripping, pouring and
throwing paint as fit into his composition. His
work inpsired the term "action painting".
• Important Works:
Full Fathom Five, 1947
Number 1 (Lavender Mist), 1950
Blue Poles, 1953

9. • was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who
was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.In 1938, probably
under the influence of Arshile Gorky, de Kooning
embarked on a series of male figures, including Two Men
Standing, Man, and Seated Figure (Classic Male), while
simultaneously embarking on a more purist series of
lyrically colored abstractions, such as Pink Landscape and
Elegy. As his work progressed, the heightened colors and
elegant lines of the abstractions began to creep into the
more figurative works, and the coincidence of figures and
abstractions continued well into the 1940s. This period
includes the representational but somewhat
geometricized Woman and Standing Man, along with
numerous untitled abstractions whose biomorphic forms
increasingly suggest the presence of figures. By about
1945 the two tendencies seemed to fuse perfectly in Pink
Angels.
Willem de Kooning

12. • was an American painter of Latvian Jewish descent.
He is generally identified as an Abstract
Expressionist, although he himself rejected this label
and even resisted classification as an "abstract
painter."Rothko's work matured from representation
and mythological subjects into rectangular fields of
color and light, that later culminated in his final
works for the Rothko Chapel. However, between the
primitivist and playful urban scenes and aquarelles of
the early period, and the late, transcendent fields of
color, was a long period of transition, marked by two
important events in Rothko's life: the onset of World
War II and his reading of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Mark Rothko

15. 1. In what year abstract expressionism started?
2. It emphasize the process of making art.
3. It is also referred as gestural painting.
4. Who created the technique of drip painting?
5. His painting focused in figures.
6. It is stained into the canvas creating areas unbroken
surface.
7. His worked focuses in mythological subjects.
8. Example of painting of Jackson Pollock.
9. What is the key to understand the abstract
expressionism?
10-13. Give some examples of abstract expressionism.
14. Commomly use for dabbing except brush.
15. Popular work of Willem De Kooning.

16. 1. 1940
2. Action painting
3. Action painting/abstract expressionism
4. Jackson Pollock
5. Willem de Kooning
6. Color field painting
7. Mark Rothko
8. Full Fathom Five/Number 1 (Lavender Mist)/Blue
Poles
9. The concept of deep/the concept of deep of 1950s slang
10-13. dripping, smearing, dabbing, flinging, pouring,
throwing paint
14. sponge,
15. Pink Angels