Building on developments in European avant-garde art of the preceding decades, a wave of artists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still developed a new abstraction that was simultaneously elemental and sophisticated.

Abstract Expressionism was a creative earthquake that al.tered the landscape of modern art, establ.ishing New York as a new capital, of artistic innovation while conceiving a visual, language that woul,d soon reach the farthest corners of the globe. Many of the artists associated with the movement were ambivalent about their involvement in it, and their artistic methods incorporated a diverse range of styles, including not only painting but also sculpture and photography. Uniting a[[ of them was a shared set of thematic concerns and a powerful commitment to formal innovation, which generated revolutionary new approaches to scale.mark-making and composition.

Emerging at the end of the Second Worl.d War, Abstract Expressionism was the product of one of the twentieth century's most traumatic moments, and its artists, some of whom had fled the turmoil, in Europe, struggled to transcend the moral, failures of the modern age through their embrace of el.ementa[ forces and universal forms. Their raw energy and artistic ambition soon earned their work national, and international, acclaim, the consequences of which were profound m and, in some cases, tragic. In the history of modern art, the achievement of these artists remains a high-water mark, and their legacy continues to shape contemporary art around the world.