1940s–1960s
Dates overlap and vary by place; they are not strict boundaries.
Movement
A movement, period and school are different kinds of historical grouping.
Associations are checked against museum records rather than assigned from dates alone.
Why it emerged
In 1940s New York, encounters with European émigrés, Surrealist methods and earlier American experiments contributed to a new scale of abstract painting. World War II intensified questions about human experience and artistic meaning. The artists shared no single technique: gestural marks and broad colour fields offered different approaches to expressive abstraction.
Key artists and contributions
Jackson Pollock
Worked around canvases on the floor, building intricate networks of poured and dripped paint.
Lee Krasner
Reworked gesture, collage and rhythmic structure across a varied independent practice.
Mark Rothko
Used expansive colour relationships to create sustained, emotionally charged encounters.
What changed afterwards
Its international visibility strengthened New York’s art institutions. Later artists developed colour-field approaches or reacted against the emphasis on individual expression through Pop and Minimalist work. These competing responses are part of its influence, not evidence of a single successor.
Sources and further reading
Original educational overview, informed by the resources below. Artist examples are selective; they are not a complete membership list.
Representative works at the museum
These are museum reference entries. Follow the links to view the works; images are not reproduced here. These entries are not included in the comparison timeline.
One: Number 31, 1950
Jackson Pollock · 1950
The Museum of Modern Art
View at museum ↗Gaea
Lee Krasner · 1966
The Museum of Modern Art
View at museum ↗Movement and school labels are interpretive tools. Individual works can cross boundaries, and an artist’s entire career is not assigned to a single movement.