Abstract expressionism, modern art movement

Abstract expressionism is the modern art movement which grew just before and during World War 2 in America. It is a typical American art movement, however it was strongly influenced by European modern art, mainly by Cubism, surrealism and the early abstract art of Kandinsky and Mondrian.
Those were partly the European artists who escaped Nazism and settled themselves in the United States, a lot of them in and around New York. So the European influence was really physical, but also the necessity to resist or to change (destroy?) this influence. In my view Abstract Expressionism was historically really the second movement in abstract art and, with a complete other identity as the first movement, in which Mondriaan, Kandinsky, the Bauhaus, Klee and the Cubist were very present.

A undeniable root for Abstract Expressionism came from Surrealism; here - in a very sophisticated way - the discovery of ‘automatic writing’ was made, as well as ‘automatic drawing’. In essence it meant that the artist worked without his mind, without thinking. Just following his or her impulses from inside can result in gestures with the brush which are unpredictable for the artists at the moment he or she makes them. It is in my view this dynamic and energetic rediscovery of ‘automatic painting’ what offered abstract expressionism its own identity and its break with traditional European abstract art. Of course this surrealist influence is also recognizable in the contemporary abstract art movement ‘École de Paris’ in France, but here practiced in a much more sophisticated and more delicate way.
Also the tradition of the American mural-painting frequently practiced in the WPA before the War helped many artists as De Kooning and Pollock to handle their canvas and materials very freely, which gave them space for large movements with the brush and for their mental freedom, in relation to the traditional concept of ‘painting’.

(will be followed soon; Fons Heijnsbroek)