Abstract Expressionism

Sources: MoMA: Abstract Expressionism, MoMA: Processes and materials, MoMA: Pollock's One: Number 31, 1950, National Gallery of Art: Mountains and Sea, and National Gallery of Australia: Helen Frankenthaler.

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  Oil paint

  Willem de Kooning repeatedly revised Woman I (1950–52) with oil paint, scraping and repainting its figure; MoMA also records metallic paint in the work. Helen Frankenthaler took a different approach in her early soak-stain paintings, pouring turpentine-thinned oil onto unprimed canvas so color entered the fibers. Their contrasting methods show how oil could support heavily reworked forms or broad stained fields.

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  Enamel paint

  Jackson Pollock used commercial enamel alongside oil paint in One: Number 31, 1950. With the unstretched canvas laid on his studio floor, he dripped, poured, and flung fluid paint rather than building an image with conventional brushstrokes. The enamel formed layered paths and splatters across the wide surface, making gravity and the movement of his hand central to the composition.

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  Acrylic paint

  Helen Frankenthaler began using acrylic paint in the early 1960s, following her earlier oil-based soak-stain experiments. The synthetic paint dried differently and produced brighter fields of color, as the Whitney Museum explains, because it did not soak into the canvas in quite the same way as thinned oil. This was a later development in postwar abstraction, not a material used by every early Abstract Expressionist.

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  Gouache paint

  Hans Hofmann used gouache with brush-and-pen ink in Page of Text (1949), a work on paper held by The Met. Its compact marks demonstrate a paper-based side of his painting practice, distinct from the large oil canvases often associated with Abstract Expressionism. The museum's materials record establishes this specific use of opaque water-based color without suggesting that gouache defined the movement as a whole.

Sources: Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum on de Kooning, MoMA: de Kooning's Woman I, MoMA: Pollock's One: Number 31, 1950, MoMA on Frankenthaler, Whitney Museum on Frankenthaler's acrylics, and The Met: Hofmann’s Page of Text.

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  Jackson Pollock

  Pollock laid canvases on the floor and poured or dripped paint across them, moving around the surface rather than composing from an easel. Works such as One: Number 31, 1950 make gesture, scale, and the physical act of painting central to Abstract Expressionism.

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  Helen Frankenthaler

  Frankenthaler's soak-stain method let thinned paint sink into unprimed canvas, making the support part of the image. Her 1952 painting Mountains and Sea helped open a path from Abstract Expressionism's gestural surface toward the expansive color fields that followed.

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  Cy Twombly

  Twombly combined oil-based house paint with crayon, pencil, and scratched marks, making each canvas feel partly written and partly drawn. His loose signs and layered revisions connect Abstract Expressionism's emphasis on gesture with references to history, poetry, and classical myth.

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  Mark Rothko

  Rothko built large canvases from softly edged rectangles that seem to hover and shift against their grounds. In works such as No. 10, thin layers and subtle color changes replace the forceful brush gesture associated with other Abstract Expressionists, inviting prolonged looking.

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  Willem de Kooning

  De Kooning repeatedly revised his paintings, scraping and repainting figures until they merged with surrounding strokes. In the Woman series, vigorous brushwork keeps the image between abstraction and representation, a defining tension within New York Abstract Expressionism.

Sources: MoMA: Abstract Expressionism; MoMA: Processes and materials; MoMA: Pollock's One: Number 31, 1950; National Gallery of Art: Mountains and Sea; National Gallery of Australia: Helen Frankenthaler.