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Abstract Expressionism and Its Legacy:
In the 1940s and 1950s, artists including Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Jans Hofmann developed a form of painting referred to as Abstract Expressionism, or the New York School. Their work explored the energy, tension, and gesture of the creative process, and developed a new approach to the canvas itself which emphasized the relationships between color, line, and space.
This first generation of Abstract Expressionists had a tremendous influence on younger artists such as Grace Hartigan, who translated the gestural style into scenes of urban life, and Joan Mitchell, whose lyrical abstractions evoke the natural world. Mitchell's monumental and panoramic Salut Tom, 1979, named in honor of critic and curator Thomas Hess (a champion of Abstract Expressionism), mimics the landscape by enveloping the viewer in color and light. |