Description
Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist.
The style was widespread from the 1940s until the early 1960s, and is closely associated with abstract expressionism (some critics have used the terms "action painting" and "abstract expressionism" interchangeably). A comparison is often drawn between the American action painting and the French tachisme. The New York School of American Abstract Expressionism (1940s-50s) is also seen as closely linked to the movement. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Jackson Pollock
The supreme archetype of the Action Painter whose kinetic, full-body movements around unstretched canvases transformed painting from static rendering into a physical arena of action.
Willem de Kooning
Leading Action Painter who utilized aggressive, sweeping brushwork and energetic physical scraping to continuously construct, demolish, and rebuild his compositions.
Franz Kline
Prominent Action Painter renowned for his stark, monumental black-and-white canvases executed with wide house-painting brushes and forceful physical gestures.
Lee Krasner
Pioneering figure whose vigorous, large-scale gestural paintings and dynamic physical slashing of canvas embodied the intense physical process of Action painting.
Helen Frankenthaler
Innovator whose soak-stain technique developed out of Action painting gestures by pouring thinned oil paint directly onto unprimed canvas stretched across the studio floor.
Jack Tworkov
Founding member of the New York School whose flame-like, diagonal gestural brushstrokes explored spontaneous physical rhythm within Action painting.
Famous Artworks
Number 1A, 1948
Jackson Pollock · 1948
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York - Oil and enamel paint on canvas
Chief
Franz Kline · 1950
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York - Oil on canvas
Excavation
Willem de Kooning · 1950
Art Institute of Chicago - Oil and enamel on canvas
Mountains and Sea
Helen Frankenthaler · 1952
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (on loan from the Frankenthaler Foundation) - Oil and charcoal on unprimed canvas
The Seasons
Lee Krasner · 1957
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York - Oil and house paint on canvas
Fun Facts
The term 'Action painting' was officially coined in December 1952 by American art critic Harold Rosenberg in his influential essay 'The American Action Painters' published in ARTnews.
↗ Source: tate.org.uk
Rosenberg famously declared that for the Action Painter, 'at a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act - rather than as a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyze or express an object.'
↗ Source: metmuseum.org
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