Gestural Abstraction

抽象表現

Dictionary entry

Art Informel 1945–1960 / Style
A postwar European abstraction that refused both geometric composition and figuration, making the surface out of matter and the traces of the act itself. Thickly piled paint, scratches, stains and tears present a state before form. The source of all design that pushes the physicality of material to the front.
Tachisme 1945–1960 / Style
A European abstraction named after the tache—the stain—that gives the leading role to the chance of touch and drip. Planned composition is abandoned; the very speed at which paint lands and flows becomes the order of the surface. Within Art Informel, the name that focuses on the swiftness of the gesture.
Neo-Expressionism 1978–1990 / Style
An international current in which large formats, violent brushwork and subjects from history and myth returned, in reaction against the asceticism of Minimal and Conceptual art. Its raw draughtsmanship and layers of grime feed directly into the temperature of 1980s record sleeves and magazine layouts.
Lyrical Abstraction 1947–1970s / Style
Abstraction that leans neither on geometric discipline nor on violent gesture, assembling a lyric out of flowing strokes and bleeding colour. The name was born in Paris and was later applied in America to thinly painted, stained canvases. A reference point whenever softness and lightness have to be designed.