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Robert Motherwell
Poet (1)
1961

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Mark Rothko
Untitled
circa 1950-2

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Robert Motherwell
Ulysses
1947

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Franz Kline
Meryon
1960-1

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Hans Hofmann
Pompeii
1959

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Arshile Gorky
Waterfall
1943

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Sam Francis
Around the Blues
1957-1962

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Jackson Pollock
Number 23
1948

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Willem De Kooning
The Visit 1966-7

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Mark Rothko
Black on Maroon
1958

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Abstract Expressionism is the term that we apply to any new forms of abstract art during the 1940’s and 1950’s in America. Typically, abstract expressionism was characterized by the rhetoric of gestural brush strokes and mark-making all with the visual impression of spontaneity. Most abstract impressionists were based in New York City and subsequently became known as the New York School. This name is due to their aim to create art that is both abstract and simultaneously expressive and inspires an emotional response within a viewer. Most abstract expressionist drew inspiration from the ideals of surrealists before them, the very idea that art should come from the unconscious mind coupled with the automatism of Joan Miró was where abstract expressionists found their inspiration.

Even so there was still a divide between the abstract expressionists. The first grouping is the Action Painters who attacked their canvases with expressive brush strokes. These Action Painters are the likes of Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning who tapped into their spontaneous improvisation skills and used large brushes to create sweeping gestural marks upon their canvas. Pollock famously using chance techniques to directly place his inner impulse onto the canvas.

The second group of artists included the likes of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman and they were deeply interested in Religion and mythology and thus created simple compositional pieces, usually large areas of single block colour that had the intentions of inspiring contemplative responses in the viewer. Newman famously said “Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or ‘life’, we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.” Hiis approach to painting developed from the 1960’s into what is now know as Colour Field Painting, characterised by the artists rhetoric of using a large surface area of mostly a single flat colour.

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Primary Research; 'Workshop' - Wyndham Lewis, 1914-1915

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Primary Research; 'Workshop' - Wyndham Lewis, 1914-1915

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This work is a piece of Vorticism, a proposition of art suited to the energy of the modern world. In this piece Lewis uses the angles and diagonals to suggest the geometry of modern buildings, the harsh colours and lines echo the discordant vitality of the modern city. This is an aggressive rhetoric, with the angular style and focus on modernity like the Italian futurists.

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Primary Research; 'Painted Screen' - Francis Bacon 1929

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Primary Research; 'Painted Screen' - Francis Bacon 1929

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Bacon worked as in interior designer before he became a painter. This screen is a transitional piece as he moved from interior designer to artist. As an interior designer he conceived modern look, including tubular steel furniture and white rubber curtains. His early paintings were influenced by late cubism.

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Primary Research; Riverbed' - Bryan Wynter, 1959

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Primary Research; Riverbed' - Bryan Wynter, 1959

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Wynter often made his paintings by using countless brushmakrs intersecting and overlapping one another. This approach was not to dissimilar to Art Informel or Tachisme as they laid emphasis on the paint matter itself and the gestural nature of the marks and how they respond to one another. However this piece works as an Abstract piece as it represents the nature Wynter surrounded himself with in Cornwall, in an abstract way.

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Primary Research; 'Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red)' - Barbara Hepworth, 1942

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Primary Research; 'Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red)' - Barbara Hepworth, 1942

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Hepworth participated in the international modernist movement and her abstract works from this period show an increasingly constructivist tendency. Her forms are inspired by the scientific and mathematical diagrams. This sculpture is one of a series of works that were made in plaster before carving a final piece into wood.

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Primary Research; 'In the Hold' - David Bomberg, 1913-1914

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Primary Research; 'In the Hold' - David Bomberg, 1913-1914

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This painting relates to Bomberg's search for a purely visual language that he could use to express his perceptions of the modern urban environment. It is based on a scene of dockers working in the hold of a ship. A ladder in the lower right of the image connects the hold to the deck. He uses geometrical framework to dissolve the subject of the painting into multiple dynamic and angular facets.

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Primary Research; 'Number 14' - Jackson Pollock, 1951

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Primary Research; 'Number 14' - Jackson Pollock, 1951

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At this point in his career Pollock had considerable success with his abstract paintings and was regarded as a leading young American artist. This was made as part of a series of black and white paintings in which figures emerge, similar to his earlier works. He would achieve this by using sticks and basting syringes full of industrial enamel paint on a canvas on the floor.

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Primary Research; 'Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams I' - Ibrahim El-Salah, 1961-1965

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Primary Research; 'Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams I' - Ibrahim El-Salah, 1961-1965

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This shows El-Salahi's development of a new visual vocabulary compromised of simple forms, strong lines and sombre colours that draw inspiration from his environment, Arabic and African forms and iconography. This specific work captures the fleeting and dramatic moment when memory, dreams and the past and present collide.

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Primary Research; 'Black Virtue' Matta, 1943

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Primary Research; 'Black Virtue' Matta, 1943

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Matta worked primarily as a surrealist, however his paintings appear as abstract with a basis in erotic and violent drawings. In this triptych the two side panels have mechanistic and science fiction imagery and quality. Yet the centre panel is more organic and suggests sexual parts. Matta concerned himself with capturing the inner world of the mind, and this piece evokes a mental landscape of extreme eroticism and violence.

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Primary Research; 'Gothic Landscape' - Lee Krasner, 1961

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Primary Research; 'Gothic Landscape' - Lee Krasner, 1961

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This is very clearly an abstract painting, however there are thick vertical lines that dominate the centre of the piece and these give the imagery of trees with thick knotted roots at their base. Gothic Landscape was made in the years following Krasners husband, Jackson Pollock's, untimely death from a car crash. The violent and deeply expressive brushstrokes reflect her grief on the large canvas.

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Primary Research; 'Azalea Garden: May 1956' - Patrick Heron, 1956

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Primary Research; 'Azalea Garden: May 1956' - Patrick Heron, 1956

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Inspired by his Cornish garden he painted this particular image during a period where he started to move into abstraction from representational art. he regarded the formal qualities of a painting highly, however he also believed that the subject matter held a high importance within an artwork.