Abstract Expressionism

This was a post-World War II movement that was primarily American in origin. Although first applied to American art in 1946 the term was coined in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm, with reference to German Expressionism. However in America Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky. The movement's principal protagonists were Hans Hoffman, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Willem De Kooning, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock. Irrefutably it became the first American visual art to achieve international prominence and authority.