Rise of abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was the first major American art movement to gain international influence, and it helped shift the centre of the art world from Paris to New York after the Second World War. It was centred on a group of painters in New York, often called the New York School, and included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Barnett Newman. Their work ranged from the energetic gestural style called action painting, as in Pollock's poured works, to the large fields of colour of Rothko and Newman. Critics such as Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg championed it, and it opened the way for later movements such as pop art.

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