1940s–1950s
Art and design made from 1940 to 1959: Abstract Expressionism, postwar European figuration, Japan's Gutai group and mid-century modern design.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for 1940s–1950s are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
The Second World War and its aftermath moved the centre of Western avant-garde art from Paris to New York. By the late 1940s a loose group later called the Abstract Expressionists was painting on a heroic scale. Jackson Pollock laid canvas on the floor and poured and flung paint across it; Willem de Kooning attacked the figure in his Woman paintings of the early 1950s; and Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman spread fields of colour meant to envelop the viewer.
In Europe, Alberto Giacometti modelled thin, eroded figures that seemed marked by the war, and Jean Dubuffet championed raw, untrained art. In Japan, the Gutai group, formed in 1954, staged actions in which Kazuo Shiraga painted with his feet. Design turned optimistic: Charles and Ray Eames moulded plywood and fibreglass into chairs produced by Herman Miller. By the late 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg's Combines and Jasper Johns's flags pointed the way to Pop.
