Abstract expressionism

In the 1940s New York became the centre of the western art world, a role normally attached to Paris. All thanks to post World War II art movement in American painting called Abstract Expressionism. 

 The term describes  a variety of artists and works which have a few features in common.
It is around 1950, do you remember what the U.S. has been going through during the last two decades? Not really pleasant  period with The Great Depression and then WWII.
Abstract expressionisms  is an expressive art of profound emotion and universal themes, most  shaped by the legacy of Surrealism, a movement that they translated into a new style fitted to the post-war mood of anxiety and trauma. 

Autumn Rhythm No. 30 Jackson Pollock (1950)

Pollock painted through "actions": an energetic technique of dripping and pouring paint on a canvas that is placed directly on the floor.



In Abstract art  paintings are the most popular, however, the milieu of Abstract Expressionism united also sculptors as well as photographers.
Having matured as artists at a time when America suffered economically and felt culturally isolated and provincial, the Abstract Expressionists were later welcomed as the first authentically American avant-garde. Their art was championed for being emphatically American in spirit - monumental in scale, romantic in mood, and expressive in individual's freedom and experience. 
A painting itself was seen as a struggle between self-expression and the chaos of the unconscious. Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists works, most of these paintings involved careful planning due to its large size.

Woman V Willem de Kooning (1952)

Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110 Robert Motherwell (1971)

Onement 1 Barnett Newman (1948)

Newman was most well known for his colour field paintings and use of "zips." Zips are the strips of colour running vertically on his painting and were made with a variety of techniques using tape to block off parts of the painting to make the stripes.














Task
Find out what is the other name of Abstract Expressionism and why Pollock's works are so recognizable and appreciated

You can find the answers here :)