Abstract Expressionism, movement in mid-20th-century painting that was primarily concerned with the spontaneous assertion of the individual through the act of painting. The movement contains a variety of styles and is characterized more by the concepts behind the art than by a specific look. The arrival in New York City during world war II  of such avant-garde European painters as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, and Yves Tanguy inspired the use of abstract expressionism among American painters in the 1940s and 1950s. American painters were also influenced by the subjective abstractions of the Armenian-born painter Arshile Gorky, who had immigrated to the United States in 1920, and by the German-born American painter and teacher Hans Hofmann, who stressed the dynamic interaction of colored planes.

The abstract expressionist movement centered in New York City and is also called the New York school. Although the styles embraced within abstract expressionism were as diverse as the styles of the painters themselves, two major tendencies were noted in the movement. Action painters were concerned with paint texture and consistency and the gestures of the artist, while color field painters gave their works impact by using unified color and shape.