It is generally accepted that the most innovatory steps in postwar painting were initially taken in New York City. The early 1940s saw the development of a loosely organized group of painters who in 1946 were labeled “Abstract Expressionists” by the critic Robert Coates. This important group—most significantly comprising Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still—was united in seeking a reconciliation of the turbulent, psychologically charged content of prewar French Surrealism and the uncompromising pictorial innovations of European post-Cubist abstraction. Seeing themselves as involved in a tragic period of history (the U.S. entered ...(100 of 73439 words)