Abstract Expressionism is a newer form of Abstract expressionism. Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement developed in New York in the 1940s. It was initially an American movement to achieve international influence and put the US at the centre of the western art world, which was formerly filled by Paris.
The term ‘abstract expressionism’ was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates. Yet it had been used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm, regarding the artform of German Expressionism. In the United States, Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky.
Abstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning in the 1940s and 1950s. It is often characterised by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity.