Abstract expressionism refers to the non-representational use of form and color as a means of expression that emerged in America in the 1940s. These artists had striven to express pure emotion directly on canvas, via color and texture.

In 1946 the art critic Robert Coates, writing in the New Yorker, first used the term 'Abstract Expressionism'. The two words combine the emotional intensity of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European Abstract schools. Although they were being painted by then little-known artists working in low-rent studio space, works of Abstract Expressionist art now dominate the walls of major museums. The last major collective Abstract Expressionism exhibition to have taken place in the UK occurred in 1959. This important publication, and the exhibition it accompanies, seek to redress the balance and re-evaluate the movement, recognising its complex and fluid reality, and branching further into multimedia. As such, this book encompasses sculptors such as David Smith and photographers such as Aaron Siskind as well as some of the most famous painters of the twentieth century, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky and Clyfford Still. AUTHOR: David Anfam is the author of the now-standard textbook Abstract Expressionism (1990). Susan Davidson is Senior Curator, Collections and Exhibitions, at the Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Edith Devaney is Curator of Contemporary Projects at the Royal Academy of Arts. Jeremy Lewison is former Director of Collections at Tate. Carter Ratcliff wrote Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art (1996). Christian Wurst was researcher on The Catalogue Raisonné of the Drawings of Jasper Johns (forthcoming). SELLING POINTS: * Accompanies the first major exhibition of Abstract Expressionism in the UK since 1959 * Works of Abstract Expressionist art dominate the walls of major museums around the world * Features an impressive range of experts who discuss some of the signature paintings of the movement 300 colour

An exhibition organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art of the Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection which comprises sixty-three modern paintings, sculptures and works on paper by fifty artists. The Abstract Expressionist paintings that form the heart of this collection were nearly all created in New York City.

This publication contains a survey of female abstract expressionist artists, revealing the richness and lasting influence of their work and the movement as a whole as well as highlighting the lack of critical attention they have received to date.

The Abstract Expressionist movement has long been bound up in the careers and lifestyles of about twelve white male artists who exhibited in New York in the 1940s. In this book Ann Eden Gibson reconsiders the history of the movement by investigating other artists -- people of color, women, and gays and lesbians -- whose versions of abstraction have been largely ignored until now.

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Sept. 28, 2010-Apr. 25, 2011.

A unique book presents Art's main stream between 1950 and1959 in New York and across the US regardless of race, gender or ethnic origin.