In the years following the Second World War, a group of artists working in New York City transformed the art world. Abstract Expressionism, as it came to be known, was the first major art movement to emerge from the United States, shifting the centre of the art world from Paris to New York and redefining what painting could be.
Breaking Boundaries
The movement produced works that were large, gestural, and abstract. Painters such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, and Philip Guston abandoned traditional composition. Instead, they embraced dynamic marks, expansive canvases, and, in the case of Pollock, the physical act of dripping and pouring paint directly onto the floor.
Though often referred to as “Abstract Expressionism,” the style was deeply influenced by Surrealism. Many European Surrealist artists had fled to America during the war, bringing with them ideas about tapping into the subconscious and the importance of gesture. These ideas were amplified into something entirely new in the hands of the New York artists.
Critics were instrumental in shaping how this work was understood. Clement Greenberg focused on painting’s formal qualities, seeing it as the next step in the evolution of modern art. Harold Rosenberg, on the other hand, emphasised the drama of the creative act itself, describing these paintings as “an arena in which to act.” This debate—sometimes called “Green Mountain vs Red Mountain”—revealed the richness and controversy of this new movement.
A New Name and Global Impact
The term “Abstract Expressionism” had first been used to describe Wassily Kandinsky’s paintings after the First World War, but it was New Yorker art critic Robert Coates who applied it to these American painters in 1946. The artists themselves were sometimes called “The Irascibles”—a nod to their rejection of traditional exhibition policies—but the name never stuck.
Exhibitions such as A Problem for Critics (Peggy Guggenheim, 1945) and The New American Painting (1958–59) brought these works to wider audiences. The latter, in particular, introduced European viewers to this bold American style, cementing Abstract Expressionism’s status as a global force.
Abstract Expressionism and the Borough Group
During the years when David Bomberg and his students—later known as the Borough Group—were developing their own approaches to painting, Abstract Expressionism remained largely unknown in Britain. It wasn’t until The New American Painting toured Europe that artists and audiences here encountered these New York painters.
Yet, despite this separation, art historian Richard Cork notes an intriguing resonance: Bomberg’s mid-century work “parallels the Abstract Expressionists’ emphasis on bodily rhythms and gesture, especially in the work of Pollock and de Kooning. Although Bomberg would not have been aware of contemporaneous developments in American avant-garde painting…”
This parallel highlights how, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, artists were responding to the same post-war context—turning to the body, gesture, and a search for authenticity in painting. Abstract Expressionism may have redefined the art world on a global scale, but the Borough Group shared its commitment to painting as a vital, physical act.