The New York School was an informal group of American poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

s, painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

s, dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

rs, and musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

s active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. The poets, painters, composers, dancers, and musicians often drew inspiration from Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 and the contemporary avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 art movements, in particular action painting

Action painting

Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...

, abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

, Jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, improvisational theater, experimental music

Experimental music

Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...

, and the interaction of friends in the New York City art world's vanguard circle

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

.

The Poets

Concerning the New York School poets, critics argued that their work was a reaction to the Confessionalist movement in Contemporary Poetry. Their poetic subject matter was often light, violent, or observational, while their writing style was often described as cosmopolitan and world-traveled. The poets often wrote in a direct, and immediate, spontaneous, manner reminiscent of word/paintings, and stream of consciousness writing, often using vivid, and visual imagery. They drew on inspiration from Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 and the contemporary avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 art movements, in particular the action painting

Action painting

Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...

 of their friends in the New York City art world circle like Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

 and Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....

.

Poets most often associated with the New York School are John Ashbery

John Ashbery

John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...

, Frank O'Hara

Frank O'Hara

Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...

, Kenneth Koch

Kenneth Koch

Kenneth Koch was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77...

, James Schuyler

James Schuyler

James Marcus Schuyler was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1980 collection The Morning of the Poem...

, Barbara Guest

Barbara Guest

Barbara Guest née Barbara Ann Pinson was an American poet and prose stylist. Guest first gained recognition as a member of the first generation New York School of poetry....

, Ted Berrigan

Ted Berrigan

-Early life:Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army in 1954 to serve in the Korean War. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in...

, Bernadette Mayer

Bernadette Mayer

Bernadette Mayer is a poet and prose writer. In 1967 she received a BA from New School for Social Research. She has since edited the journal 0 TO 9 with Vito Acconci and the United Artists Press with Lewis Warsh...

, Alice Notley

Alice Notley

Alice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...

, Kenward Elmslie

Kenward Elmslie

Kenward Gray Elmslie is an American writer, performer, editor and publisher associated with the New York School of poetry.-Life and career:...

, Ron Padgett

Ron Padgett

Ron Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Bean Spasms, Padget's first collection of poems, was published in 1967 and written with Ted Berrigan...

, Lewis Warsh, and Joseph Ceravolo

Joseph Ceravolo

Joseph Ceravolo was an American poet associated with the second generation of the New York School. Most of Ceravolo’s work is out of print and his popularity is limited to the community of writers...

.

O'Hara was at the center of the group before his death in 1966. Because of his numerous friendships and post as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

, he provided connections between the poets and painters like Jane Freilicher, Fairfield Porter

Fairfield Porter

Fairfield Porter was an American painter and art critic. He was the brother of photographer Eliot Porter and the brother-in-law of federal Reclamation Commissioner Michael W. Straus....

 and Larry Rivers

Larry Rivers

Larry Rivers was an American artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Rivers resided and maintained studios in New York City, Southampton, New York and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.-Biography:...

 (also his lover). There were many joint works and collaborations: Rivers inspired a play by Koch, Koch and Ashbery together wrote the poem "A Postcard to Popeye", Ashbery and Schuyler wrote the novel A Nest of Ninnies, and Schuyler collaborated on an ode with O'Hara, whose portrait was painted by Rivers.

Koch, O'Hara, Schuyler and Ashbery were quite different as poets, but they admired each other and had much in common personally:

• Except for Schuyler, all overlapped at Harvard University
  Harvard University
  Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
  
  ,
• Except for Koch, all were homosexual,
• Except for Ashbery, all did military service,
• Except for Koch, all reviewed art,
• Except for Ashbery, who soon moved to Paris
  Paris
  Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
  
  , all lived in New York during their formative years as poets.

All four were inspired by French Surrealists

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 like Raymond Roussel

Raymond Roussel

Raymond Roussel was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, and chess enthusiast. Through his novels, poems, and plays he exerted a profound influence on certain groups within 20th century French literature, including the Surrealists, Oulipo, and the authors of the nouveau...

, Pierre Reverdy

Pierre Reverdy

Pierre Reverdy was a French poet associated with surrealism and cubism.Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne and grew up near the Montagne Noire in his father's house. Reverdy came from a family of sculptors. His father taught him to read and write. He studied at Toulouse and Narbonne.Reverdy...

 and Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire

Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

. David Lehman, in his book on the New York poets, wrote, "They favored wit, humor and the advanced irony of the blague (that is, the insolent prank or jest) in ways more suggestive of Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...

 and Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...

 than of the New York School abstract expressionist

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

 painters after whom they were named."

The Beats

There are also commonalities between the New York School and the members of the beat generation

Beat generation

The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

 poets also active in 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s New York City. Including Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso

Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers...

, Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

, Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...

, Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

, William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

, Diane di Prima

Diane di Prima

Diane Di Prima is an American poet.-Early life:Di Prima was born in Brooklyn. She attended Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan...

, Diane Wakoski

Diane Wakoski

Diane Wakoski is a American poet who is primarily associated with the deep image poets, as well as the confessional and Beat poets of the 1960s.-Biography:...

, Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman is an American poet.Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist....

, Tuli Kupferberg

Tuli Kupferberg

Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg was an American counterculture poet, author, cartoonist, pacifist anarchist, publisher and co-founder of the band The Fugs.-Biography:...

, Ed Sanders

Ed Sanders

Ed Sanders is an American poet, singer, social activist, environmentalist, author and publisher and has been a longtime member of the band The Fugs. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and Hippie generations.-Biography:...

, Norris Embry

Norris Embry

Norris Embry was an American neo-expressionist artist born on January 14, 1921 in Louisville, Kentucky.He grew up in East Orange, New Jersey outside New York City and Evanston, Illinois in the Chicago area, attending public schools through high school. Later, he studied at St. John's College in...

, and several others. Many of the poets, including Koch, Ashberry, Ginsberg, and Kerouac attended Columbia University.

The Composers

The term also refers to a circle of composers in the 1950s who orbited around John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

: Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...

, Earle Brown

Earle Brown

Earle Brown was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems...

 and Christian Wolff

Christian Wolff (composer)

Christian G. Wolff is an American composer of experimental classical music.-Biography:Wolff was born in Nice in France to German literary publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff, who had published works by Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, and Walter Benjamin. After relocating to the U.S...

. Their music paralleled the music and events of the Fluxus

Fluxus

Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...

 group, and drew its name from the Abstract Expressionist

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

 painters above. What brought these artists together was a faith in the liberation of the unconscious and an excitement drawn from the street energies of Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

. In the 1960s the work of the avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 Minimalist

Minimalism

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...

 composers La Monte Young

La Monte Young

La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...

, Philip Glass

Philip Glass

Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...

, Tony Conrad

Tony Conrad

Tony Conrad is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer...

, Steve Reich

Steve Reich

Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...

, and Terry Riley

Terry Riley

Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...

 became prominent in the New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 art world.

The Dancers

During the 1960s the Judson Dance Theater

Judson Dance Theater

Judson Dance Theater was an informal group of dancers who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, Manhattan New York City between 1962 and 1964. It grew out of a dance composition class taught by Robert Dunn, a musician who had studied with John Cage...

 located at the Judson Memorial Church

Judson Memorial Church

The Judson Memorial Church is located on Washington Square South between Thompson and Sullivan Streets, opposite Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of the Manhattan borough of New York City...

, New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, revolutionized Modern dance

Modern dance

Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dance has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance.-Intro:...

. Combining in new ways the idea of Performance art

Performance art

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

, radical and new Choreography

Choreography

Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...

, sound from avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 composers, and dancers in collaboration with several New York School Visual artists

Visual arts

The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...

. The group of artists that formed Judson Dance Theater are considered the founders of Postmodern dance

Postmodern dance

Postmodern dance is a 20th century concert dance form. A reaction to the compositional and presentation constraints of modern dance, postmodern dance hailed the use of everyday movement as valid performance art and advocated novel methods of dance composition....

. The theater grew out of a dance composition class taught by Robert Dunn, a musician who had studied with John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

. The artists involved with Judson Dance Theater were avant-garde experimenatalists who rejected the confines of ballet technique, vocabulary and theory.

The first Judson concert took place on July 6, 1962, with dance works presented by Steve Paxton, Freddie Herko

Freddie Herko

Frederick Charles "Freddie" Herko was an artist, musician, actor, dancer, choreographer and teacher.-Biography:...

, David Gordon, Alex and Deborah Hay, Yvonne Rainer, Elaine Summers, William Davis, and Ruth Emerson. Seminal dance artists that were a part of the Judson Dance Theater include:
David Gordon, Steve Paxton

Steve Paxton

Steve Paxton is an experimental dancer and choreographer. His early background was in gymnastics while his later training included three years with Merce Cunningham and a year with José Limón. As a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater, he performed works by Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown...

, Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental. Her work is classified as minimalist art.- Early life :...

, Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown is a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer.Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and received a B.A. degree in dance from Mills College in 1958. Brown later received a D.F.A. from Bates College in 2000. For several summers she studied with Louis Horst at the American Dance...

, Lucinda Childs, Deborah Hay, Elaine Summers

Elaine Summers

Elaine Summers American choreographer, experimental filmmaker, and intermedia pioneer.Summers was a founding member of the workshop-group that would form the Judson Dance Theater and significantly contributed to the interaction of film and dance, as well as the expansion of dance into other related...

, Sally Gross, Aileen Passloff, and Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk

Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...

. The years 1962 to 1964 are considered the golden age of the Judson Dance Theater.

During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s New York School artists collaborated with several other choreographer

Choreography

Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...

 / dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

rs including: Simone Forti, Anna Halprin, Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham

Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...

, Martha Graham

Martha Graham

Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...

, and Paul Taylor.

Jazz

The new Bebop

Bebop

Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...

 and cool jazz

Cool jazz

Cool is a style of modern jazz music that arose following the Second World War. It is characterized by its relaxed tempos and lighter tone, in contrast to the bebop style that preceded it...

 musicians in the 1940s and 1950s featuring Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker

Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....

, Miles Davis

Miles Davis

Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

, Max Roach

Max Roach

Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history...

, Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

, Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...

, Charles Mingus

Charles Mingus

Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...

, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

, Stan Getz

Stan Getz

Stanley Getz was an American jazz saxophone player. Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz is described by critic Scott...

, Ahmad Jamal

Ahmad Jamal

Ahmad Jamal is an innovative and influential American jazz pianist, composer, and educator. According to Stanley Crouch, Jamal is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Charlie Parker...

, Gerry Mulligan

Gerry Mulligan

Gerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulligan was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though Mulligan is primarily known as one of the leading baritone saxophonists in jazz history – playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz – he was also...

, and many other great Jazz musicians set the tone for the New York School and Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

. Later new jazz musicians like Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp is a prominent African-American jazz saxophonist. Shepp is best known for his passionately Afrocentric music of the late 1960s, which focused on highlighting the injustices faced by the African-Americans, as well as for his work with the New York Contemporary Five, Horace Parlan, and...

, Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....

, Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Rahsaan Roland Kirk was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played tenor saxophone, flute and many other instruments...

, Pharoah Sanders

Pharoah Sanders

Pharoah Sanders is a Grammy Award–winning American jazz saxophonist.Saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world." Emerging from John Coltrane's groups of the mid-60s Sanders is known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on...

, the evolving Miles Davis

Miles Davis

Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

, and John Coltrane

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

 created the sounds for the new and more cool Hard-edge

Hard-edge painting

Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting.-History of the term:The term was...

 painters, Minimal

Minimalism

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...

 artists, Color Field

Color Field

Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists...

 painters, Lyrical Abstraction

Lyrical Abstraction

Lyrical Abstraction is either of two related but distinctly separate trends in Post-war Modernist painting, and a third definition is the usage as a descriptive term. It is a descriptive term characterizing a type of abstract painting related to Abstract Expressionism; in use since the 1940s...

ists, and Pop

Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

 artists of the 1960s.

New York School abstract expressionists of the 1950s

The New York School which represented the New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 abstract expressionists

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

 of the 1950s was documented through a series of artists' committee

Committee

A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole"...

 invitational exhibitions

Art exhibition

Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" or...

 commencing with the 9th Street Art Exhibition in 1951 and followed by consecutive exhibitions at the Stable Gallery, NYC: Second Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, 1953; Third Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, 1954; Fourth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, 1955; Fifth Annual Exhibitions of Painting and Sculpture, 1956 and Sixth New York Artists’ Annual Exhibition, 1957.

A

• Herb Aach (1923–1985)
• Mary Abbott (1921-)
• Ruth Abrams
  Ruth Abrams (artist)
  Ruth Abrams was an American painter. Abrams was born in Brooklyn, New York. At 19, she was married to urban planner Charles Abrams, and studied at Columbia University. She worked with William Zorach, Alexander Archipenko, John D. Graham, and others...
  
   (1912-1986)
• Patricia Adams (1928-)
• Peter Agostini
  Peter Agostini
  Peter Agostini was an American sculptor.-Life:He studied at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School in 1935 and 1936....
  
   (1913–1993)
• Josef Albers
  Josef Albers
  Josef Albers was a German-born American artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century....
  
   (1888–1976)
• Calvin Albert (1918–2007)
• Olga Albizu
  Olga Albizu
  Olga Albizu was an abstract expressionist painter. She was born and raised in Puerto Rico, where she studied painting with the Spanish painter Esteban Vicente from 1943 till 1947. She received a B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico in 1946. She moved to New York City on a fellowship for...
  
   (1924–2005)
• Alfred L. Copley
  Alfred L. Copley
  Alfred Lewin Copley was a German-American medical scientist and an artist at the New York School in the 1950s. As an artist he worked under the name L. Alcopley. He is best known as an artist for his abstract expressionist paintings, and as a scientist for his work in the field of hemorheology...
  
   (1910–1992)
• Anderson (NA)
• Andrews (NA)
• Anne Arnold (1925-)
• Ruth Asawa (1926-)
• Elise Asher (1914–2004)
• Milton Avery
  Milton Avery
  Milton Avery was an American modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City.-Biography:...
  
   (1885–1965)

B

• Alice Baber
  Alice Baber
  Alice Baber was an American abstract expressionist painter who worked in oils and watercolor.Alice was born in Charleston, Illinois. She grew up in Kansas, Illinois and Miami, Florida, her family traveled south to Florida yearly because of Alice poor health. They settled in Illinois when World War...
  
   (1928–1982)
• William Baziotes
  William Baziotes
  William Baziotes was an American painter influenced by Surrealism and was a contributor to Abstract Expressionism.-Life and career:...
  
   (1912–1963)
• Robert Beauchamp (1923–1995)
• Rosemarie Beck (1923–2003)
• Benn Ben (1884–1983)
• J. Benton (NA)
• Janice Biala (1903–2000)
• Nell Blaine (1922–1996)
• Ilya Bolotowsky
  Ilya Bolotowsky
  Ilya Bolotowsky was a leading early 20th-century painter in abstract styles in New York City. His work, a search for philosophical order through visual expression, embraced cubism and geometric abstraction and was much influenced by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.Born to Jewish parents in St...
  
   (1907–1981)
• Cameron Booth (1892–1980)
• Rene Bouche (1906–1963)
• Louise Bourgeois
  Louise Bourgeois
  Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...
  
   (1911-2010)
• Paul Brach
  Paul Brach
  Paul Brach, Born March 13, 1924 in New York City and he died November 16, 2007 in Easthampton, New York. Paul Brach was primarily known as an American abstract painter and as a lecturer and educator....
  
   (1924–2007)
• Theodore Brenson (1893–1959)
• Ernest Briggs (1923–1984)
• Gandy Brodie (1925–1975)
• James Brooks
  James Brooks (painter)
  James Brooks was an American muralist, abstract painter and winner of the Logan Medal of the Arts. Brooks was a friend of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner on Eastern Long Island. In 1947 he married artist Charlotte Park...
  
   (1906–1992)
• Daniel Brustlein (Alain) (1904–1996)
• Fritz Bultman
  Fritz Bultman
  Fritz Bultman was an American Abstract expressionist painter, sculptor, and collagist and a member of the New York School of artists....
  
   (1919–1985)
• Peter Busa (1914–1985)
• John Button
  John Button (artist)
  John Button was an American artist, well-known for his city-scapes. Educated at the University of California, Berkeley then moved to New York City in the early 1950s...
  
   (1929–1982)

C

• Charles Cajori (1921-)
• Gretna Campbell (1922–1987)
• M. Carles (NA)
• Nicolas Carone
  Nicolas Carone
  Nicolas Carone belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris...
  
   (1917-2010)
• Giorgio Cavallon
  Giorgio Cavallon
  Giorgio Cavallon was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists and a pioneer Abstract Expressionist.-Biography:Giorgio Cavallon was born March 3, 1904 in Sorio, near Venice Italy and immigrated to the USA in 1920...
  
   (1904–1989)
• Bernard Chaet (1924-)
• Chase (NA)
• Herman Cherry (1909–1992)
• Carmen Cicero (1926-)
• Robert F. Conover (1920–1998)
• Edward Corbett (1919–1971)
• Joseph Cornell
  Joseph Cornell
  Joseph Cornell was an American artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage...
  
   (1903–1972)
• Martin Craig (1906-)
• Rollin Crampton (1896–1970)
• Jane Crawford (1927-)
• Hubert Crehan (NA)
• Ben Cunningham (painter)|Ben Cunningham (1904–1975)

D

• Nanno de Groot (1913–1963)
• Dorothy Dehner
  Dorothy Dehner
  -Biography:She grew up in Cleveland.In 1918, she took classes at the Pasadena Playhouse, and studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.In 1922, she moved to New York City, and studied at the Art Students League....
  
   (1901–1994)
• Elaine de Kooning
  Elaine de Kooning
  Elaine de Kooning was an Abstract Expressionist, Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era and editorial associate for Art News magazine...
  
   (1918-(1989)
• Willem de Kooning
  Willem de Kooning
  Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
  
   (1904–1997)
• Robert De Niro, Sr.
  Robert De Niro, Sr.
  Robert Henry De Niro, Sr. was an American abstract expressionist painter and the father of actor Robert De Niro.-Life and career:...
  
   (1922–1993)
• Jose de Rivera (1904–1985)
• Edwin Dickinson
  Edwin Dickinson
  Edwin Walter Dickinson was an American painter and draftsman best known for psychologically charged self-portraits, quickly painted landscapes, which he called premier coups, and large, hauntingly enigmatic paintings involving figures and objects painted from observation, in which he invested his...
  
   (1891–1978)
• Burgoyne Diller
  Burgoyne Diller
  Burgoyne A. Diller was an American abstract painter. Many of his best-known works are characterized by orthogonal geometric forms that reflect his strong interest in the De Stijl movement and the work of Piet Mondrian in particular...
  
   (1906–1965)
• Lois Dodd (1927-)
• Enrico Donati
  Enrico Donati
  Enrico Donati was an American Surrealist painter and sculptor of Italian birth.-Life and work:Enrico Donati studied economics at the Università degli Studi, Pavia, and in 1934 moved to the USA, where he attended the New School for Social Research and the Art Students League of New York...
  
   (1909–2008)
• Edward Dugmore
  Edward Dugmore
  Edward Dugmore was an abstract expressionist painter known for close ties to both the San Francisco and New York art worlds in post-war era following World War II. Since 1950 he had more than two dozen solo exhibitions of his paintings in galleries across the United States...
  
   (1915–1996)
• Friedel Dzubas
  Friedel Dzubas
  Friedel Dzubas was a German-born American abstract painter.-Life and work:Friedel Dzubas studied art in his native land before fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 and settling in New York City. In Manhattan during the early 1950s, he shared a studio with fellow abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler...
  
   (1915–1994)

F

• Fred Farr (1914–1973)
• Sam L. Feinstein (1915-)
• Herbert Ferber
  Herbert Ferber
  Herbert Ferber was an American sculptor and painter, born in New York City. He began his independent artistic studies in New York in 1926 at evening classes at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, while attending Columbia University Dental School...
  
   (1906–1991)
• John Ferren (1905–1970)
• Fick (NA)
• Perle Fine
  Perle Fine
  Perle Fine was among the most prominent female artists associated with American Abstract Expressionism.-Biography:Perle Fine was born in Boston, MA, in 1908. Her interest in art started at early age. In her early twenties she moved to New York City to study at the Art Students League with Kimon...
  
   (1908–1988)
• Louis Finkelstein
  Louis Finkelstein (artist)
  Louis Finkelstein was an American painter and professor at Queens College, City University of New York. Several of his works have been compared to those of French artist and Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne .-Biography:...
  
   (1923–2000)
• Joe Fiore (1925–2008)
• Ida Fischer (1883–1956)
• Fitzsimmons (NA)
• Audrey Flack
  Audrey Flack
  Audrey Flack is an American photorealist painter, printmaker, and sculptor.Flack studied fine arts in New York from 1948 to 1953. She earned a graduate degree and an honorary doctorate from Cooper Union in New York City, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Yale University. She studied art history at...
  
   (1931-)
• Jean Follet (1917–1991)
• Miles Forst (1923-2006)
• Helen Frankenthaler
  Helen Frankenthaler
  Helen Frankenthaler is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work...
  
   (1928-)
• Seymour Frankes (NA)
• Jane Freilicher (1924-)
• Syd Fromboluti (1920-)

G

• Sidney Geist (1914–2005)
• William Getman (1916–1972)
• Ilse Getz (1917–1992)
• Julio Girona (1914-)
• Fritz Glarner (1899–1972)
• Joseph M. Glasco (1925–1996)
• Michael Goldberg
  Michael Goldberg
  Michael Goldberg was an American abstract expressionist painter and teacher known for his gestural action paintings, abstractions and still-life paintings. His work was recently seen in September 2007 in a solo exhibition at Knoedler & Company in New York City, as well as several exhibitions at...
  
   (Stuart) (1924–2007)
• Sam Goodman (N/A)
• Robert Goodnough (1917-)
• Sidney Gordin (1918–1996)
• Adolph Gottlieb
  Adolph Gottlieb
  Adolph Gottlieb was an American abstract expressionist painter, sculptor and graphic artist.-Biography:Gottlieb was born in New York to Jewish parents. From 1920-1921 he studied at the Art Students League of New York, after which he traveled in France and Germany for a year...
  
   (1903–1974)
• John D. Graham
  John D. Graham
  John D. Graham was a Ukrainian-born American Modernist / figurative painter.He was born Ivan Gratianovitch Dombrowsky in Kiev, Ukraine...
  
   (1886–1961)
• Balcomb Greene
  Balcomb Greene
  Balcomb Greene and his wife, artist Gertrude Glass Greene, were heavily involved in political activism to promote mainstream acceptance of abstract art. They were founding members of the American Abstract Artists organization. His early style was completely non-objective. Juan Gris and Piet...
  
   (1904–1990)
• Gertrude G. Green (1904–1956)
• Clement Greenberg
  Clement Greenberg
  Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
  
   (1909–1994)
• John Grillo (1917-)
• Peter Grippe (1912–2002)
• Salvatore Grippi (1921-)
• Joseph Groell (NA)
• Jose Guerrero (1914–1992)
• Philip Guston
  Philip Guston
  Philip Guston was a notable painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the Abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning...
  
   (1913–1980)

H

• Ruth Hageman (NA)
• Raoul Hague (1905–1993)
• David Hare
  David Hare (artist)
  David Hare was an American artist, associated with the Surrealist movement. He is primarily known for his sculpture, though he also worked extensively in photography and painting.-Life and work:...
  
   (1917–1992)
• Grace Hartigan
  Grace Hartigan
  Grace Hartigan was an American Abstract Expressionist painter of the New York School in the 1950s.-Biography and early career:...
  
   (1922–2008)
• Fred Hauck (1905–1960)
• Sally Hazelet (1924-)
• Raymond Hendler
  Raymond Hendler
  Raymond Hendler was a Philadelphia born action painter whose mature work began in the ferment of postwar Paris. Supported by the G.I. Bill, he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, exhibited at the Musee D’Art Moderne and was one of the founding members of Galerie Huit...
  
   (1923–1998)
• Emil John Hess (1913-)
• Clinton Hill (1922-)
• Hans Hofmann
  Hans Hofmann
  Hans Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter.-Biography:Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich...
  
   (1880–1966)
• Charles Hodges (NA)
• John Hultberg (1922–2005)

J

• Harry Jackson (1924-)
• Alfred Jensen (1903–1981)
• Ben Johnson (artist) (1902–1967)
• Lester Johnson
  Lester Johnson (artist)
  Lester Johnson was an American artist.As a figurative expressionist and member of the Second Generation of the New York School, painter Lester Johnson remained dedicated to the human figure as means of expression through the many stylistic changes of his oeuvre.In New York, Johnson exhibited at...
  
   (1919–2010)

K

• Reuben Kadish
  Reuben Kadish
  Reuben Kadish was an American artist, specializing as a sculptor, draughtsman, muralist, painter, and printmaker. In his later career he also taught art history and sculpture in New York.-Early life:...
  
   (1913–1992)
• Wolf Kahn
  Wolf Kahn
  Wolf Kahn is a German-born American painter.Kahn is known for his combination of realism and Color Field, and known to work in pastel and oil paint. He studied under Hans Hofmann, and also graduated from the University of Chicago...
  
   (1927-)
• Herbert Kallem (1909–1994)
• Howard Kanovitz (1929–2009)
• Morris Kantor (1896–1974)
• Hubert Kappel (NA)
• Alex Katz
  Alex Katz
  Alex Katz is an American figurative artist associated with the Pop art movement. In particular, he is known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints and is represented by numerous galleries internationally.-Life and work:...
  
   (1927-)
• Earl Kerkam
  Earl Kerkam
  Earl Cavis Kerkam, according to Willem deKooning, Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, George Spaventa and Esteban Vicente “was one of the finest painters to come out of America.” Gerald Norland wrote at the Ear Kerkam Memorial Exhibition in 1966:...
  
   (1891–1965)
• William Kienbusch (1914–1980)
• Frederich Kiesler (1896–1965)
• William King
  William King (artist)
  William King is a contemporary American sculptor born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1925. His work spans countless media and usually revolves around the figurative portrayal of human figures. After attending the University of Florida, King moved to New York in 1945 and graduated from Cooper Union in...
  
   (1925-)

• Klavin (NA)
• Franz Kline
  Franz Kline
  Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
  
   (1910–1962)
• Guitou Knoop (1909–1985)
• Gabriel Kohn (1910–1975)
• Albert Kotin
  Albert Kotin
  Albert Kotin belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris...
  
   (1907–1980)
• Lee Krasner
  Lee Krasner
  Lee Krasner was an influential abstract expressionist painter in the second half of the 20th century. On October 25, 1945, she married artist Jackson Pollock, who was also influential in the Abstract Expressionism movement....
  
   (1908–1984)
• Albert Kresch
  Albert Kresch
  Albert Kresch is a New York School painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. One of the original members of the Jane Street Gallery in the 1930s, he exhibited in later years at Tibor de Nagy Gallery and Salander-O’Reilly Galleries...
  
   (1922–)

L

• Ibram Lassaw
  Ibram Lassaw
  Ibram Lassaw is an American sculptor, known for nonobjective construction in brazed metals.-Biography:Lassaw was born in Alexandria, Egypt, of Russian émigré parents, he went to the U.S. in 1921. His family settled in Brooklyn, New York. He became a US citizen in 1928...
  
   (1913–2003)
• Alfred Leslie
  Alfred Leslie
  Alfred Leslie is an American artist and filmmaker. He first achieved success as an Abstract Expressionist painter, but changed course in the early 1960s and became a painter of realistic figurative paintings.-Biography:...
  
   (1927-)
• Israel Levitan
  Israel Levitan
  Israel Levitan was an American abstract expressionist sculptor, born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Renowned as a sculptor, Levitan also produced paintings, graphics and fine art works on paper....
  
  (1912–1982)
• Landes Lewitin (1892–1966)
• Linda Lindeberg (1915–1973)
• Richard Lippold
  Richard Lippold
  Richard Lippold was an American sculptor, known for his geometric constructions using wire as a medium....
  
   (1915–2002)
• Seymour Lipton
  Seymour Lipton
  Seymour Lipton was an American abstract expressionist sculptor. He was a member of the New York School who gained widespread recognition in the 1950s. He initially trained as a dentist but focused on sculpture from 1932. His early choices of medium changed from wood to lead and then to bronze, and...
  
   (1903–1986)
• John Little (1907–1984)
• William H. Littlefield (1902–1969)
• Michael Loew
  Michael Loew
  Michael Loew was an American Abstract Expressionist artist who was born in New York City.In the late 1920s, Loew studied at the Art Students League with the Ashcan School and was a recipient of a Sadie A. May Fellowship which allowed Loew to continue his studies in France...
  
   (1907–1985)
• Vincent J. Longo (1923-)
• David Lund
  David Lund
  David Lund is identified with the abstract expressionist painters of the New York School. His landscape oils done in the 1950s are exemplary of the bold combination of form, color and texture for which this group is celebrated...
  
   (1925-)

M

• M. Manning (NA)
• Conrad Marca-Relli
  Conrad Marca-Relli
  Conrad Marca-Relli was an American artist who belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris...
  
   (1913–2000)
• Marcia Marcus (1928-)
• Boris Margo (1902–1995)
• Marisol Escobar
  Marisol Escobar
  Maria Sol Escobar , otherwise known simply as Marisol, is a sculptor born in Paris of Venezuelan lineage, living in Europe, the United States and Caracas.-Education:...
  
   (1930-)
• Nicholas Marsicano
  Nicholas Marsicano
  Nicholas Marsicano , American painter and teacher of the New York School, was married to Dancer/Choreagrapher Merle Marsicano...
  
   (1908–1991)
• Knox Martin
  Knox Martin
  Knox Martin is an American painter, sculptor and muralist.Born in 1923 in Barranquilla, Colombia, he studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1946 till 1950. He is one of the leading members of New York School - a group of artists and writers. He lives and works in New York City."Art is...
  
   (1923-)
• Alice T. Mason (1904–1971)
• Mercedes Matter
  Mercedes Matter
  Mercedes Matter née Carles was an American painter and draughtswoman. Her father was the American modernist painter Arthur Beecher Carles who had studied with Henri Matisse. Her mother, Mercedes de Cordoba, was a model for Edward Steichen...
  
   (1913–2001)
• George McNeil (1908–1995)
• Deven Mead (NA)
• Joseph Messina (NA)
• Jeanne Patterson Miles (1908–1999)
• Fred Mitchell
  Fred Mitchell (artist)
  Fred Mitchell belonged to the New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose influence and artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized around the world...
  
   (1923-)
• Joan Mitchell
  Joan Mitchell
  Joan Mitchell was a "second generation" abstract expressionist painter. She was an essential member of the American Abstract expressionist movement, even though much of her career took place in France. Along with Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, and Helen Frankenthaler she was one of her era's few...
  
   (1926–1992)
• Hans Moller (1905-200)
• Kyle Morris (1917–1979)
• Robert Motherwell
  Robert Motherwell
  Robert Motherwell American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston....
  
   (1915–1991)
• Jan Müller
  Jan Müller (artist)
  Jan Müller was a New York Figurative Expressionist of the 1950s. According to Carter Ratcliff, "His paintings usually erect a visual architecture sturdy enough to support an array of standing, riding, levitating figures...
  
   (1922–1958)

N

• Reuben Nakian
  Reuben Nakian
  Reuben Nakian was an American sculptor and teacher of Armenian extraction. His recurring themes are from Greek and Roman mythology. Noted works include Leda and the Swan, The Rape of Lucrece, Hecuba, and The Birth of Venus...
  
   (1897–1986)
• Louise Berliawsky Nevelson
  Louise Berliawsky Nevelson
  Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in Czarist Russia, she emigrated with her family to the United States in the early 20th century when she was three years old. Nevelson learned English at school, as she...
  
   (1900–1988)
• Al James Newbill (1921-)
• Roy Newell (NA)
• Nichols (NA)
• Costantino Nivola
  Costantino Nivola
  Costantino Nivola was an Italian sculptor. He is the grandfather of actor Alessandro Nivola.- Birth and upbringing :...
  
   (1911–1988)
• Dm Newman (1911–1988)
• Isamu Noguchi
  Isamu Noguchi
  was a prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces,...
  
   (1904–1988)

O

• Kenzo Okada
  Kenzo Okada
  Kenzo Okada was a Japanese-born American painter.According to Michelle Stuart, “when Okada came to the United States he was already a mature painter, well considered in his native Japan...
  
   (1902–1982)
• George Earl Ortman
  George Earl Ortman
  George Earl Ortman is an American painter, printmaker, constructionist and sculptor. His work has been referred to as Neo-Dada, Pop art,Minimalism, and Hard Edge...
  
   (1926-)
• Cyril Osborn (NA)
• Alfonso A. Ossorio
  Alfonso A. Ossorio
  Alfonso A. Ossorio was an abstract expressionist artist who was born in Manila in 1916 to wealthy Filipino parents from the province of Negros Occidental. His heritage was Hispanic, Filipino, and Chinese. Between the ages of eight and thirteen, he attended school in England. At age fourteen, he...
  
   (1916–1990)

P

• Stephan Pace (1918-)
• Charlotte Park (1918-)
• Ray Parker (1922–1990)
• Felix Pasilis (1922-)
• Patricia Passlof (NA)
• Philip Pavia (1912–2005)
• Vincent Pepi
  Vincent Pepi
  Vincent Pepi is an abstract expressionist painter associated with the New York School. His contribution to American art includes some of the foremost examples of action painting, produced consistently over the course of the second half of the 20th century. His art parallels the works of Jackson...
  
   (1926-)
• Philip Pearlstein
  Philip Pearlstein
  Philip Pearlstein is an American painter, and part of the contemporary Realist school.-Biography:Pearlstein was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and received his Masters in art history at New York University. He was a friend of Andy Warhol from...
  
   (1924-)
• Howard Petersen (NA)
• Vita Peterson (1915–2011)
• Piller (NA)
• Reginald Pollack
  Reginald Pollack
  Reginald Murray Pollack was an American painter known for metaphorical and theme based works of art. He was also a veteran of World War II having served in the Pacific Theater of Operations.-Early Life:...
  
   (1924–2001)
• Jackson Pollock
  Jackson Pollock
  Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
  
   (1912–1956)
• Fairfield Porter
  Fairfield Porter
  Fairfield Porter was an American painter and art critic. He was the brother of photographer Eliot Porter and the brother-in-law of federal Reclamation Commissioner Michael W. Straus....
  
   (1907–1975)
• Richard Pousette-Dart
  Richard Pousette-Dart
  Richard Pousette-Dart was an American Abstract Expressionist painter.-Biography:He was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota and grew up in Valhalla, New York. Although Richard never attended art school, his father, Nathaniel J. Pousette-Dart, was a painter and writer on art. He moved to Manhattan in 1937...
  
   (1916–1992)
• Melville Price (1920–1970)

R

• Robert Rauschenberg
  Robert Rauschenberg
  Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
  
   (1925–2008)
• Ad Reinhardt
  Ad Reinhardt
  Adolph Frederick Reinhardt was an Abstract painter active in New York beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1960s. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists and was a part of the movement centered around the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as Abstract Expressionism...
  
   (1913–1967)
• Wallace Reiss (1925–1978))
• Theophil Reppke (N/A)
• Milton Resnick
  Milton Resnick
  Milton Resnick was a major abstract expressionist painter and teacher known for his mystical, abstract and figurative paintings. Born in Bratslav, Russia, he emigrated to the United States in 1922.-Biography:...
  
   (1917–2004)
• Jeanne Reynal (1903–1983)
• Robert Richenburg (1917–2006)
• Larry Rivers
  Larry Rivers
  Larry Rivers was an American artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Rivers resided and maintained studios in New York City, Southampton, New York and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.-Biography:...
  
   (1923–2002)
• Raymond Rocklin (1922-)
• James Rosati
  James Rosati
  James Rosati was an American abstract sculptor.Born in Pennsylvania, Rosati moved to New York in 1944, where he befriended fellow sculptor Philip Pavia. He was a charter member of the Eighth Street Club and the New York School of abstract expressionists...
  
   (1911–1988)
• Leatrice Rose (N/A)
• Anne Ryan
  Anne Ryan
  Anne Ryan belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists. Her first contact with the New York Avant-garde came in 1941 when she joined the Atelier 17, a famous printmaking workshop that the British artist Stanley William Hayter had established in Paris in the...
  
   (1889–1954)

S

• Attilio Salemme (1911–1955)
• Ludwig Sander (1906–1975)
• Joop Sanders
  Joop Sanders
  Joop Sanders is a painter and founding member of the American Abstract Expressionist group. He is the youngest member of the first generation of the New York School. He exhibited in the legendary "9th Street Art Exhibition", otherwise known as the 9th St. Show, May 21-June 10, 1951 along with...
  
   (1921-)
• Angelo Savelli (1911-)
• Louis Schanker
  Louis Schanker
  Louis Schanker was an American abstract artist born in 1903. He grew up in an orthodox Jewish environment in the Bronx, New York. His parents were of Romanian descent...
  
   (1903–1981)
• Miriam Schapiro
  Miriam Schapiro
  Miriam Schapiro is a Canadian-born artist based in America. She is a pioneer of feminist art. She is also considered part of the Pattern and Decoration art movement....
  
   (1923-)
• Abram Schlemovitz (N/A)
• Edith Schloss (1919-)
• Day T. Schnabel (1905-)
• Max Schnitzler (1903-)
• Jon Schueler
  Jon Schueler
  Jon Schueler was an American artist.-Biography:Schueler was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He first had the desire to become a writer, and after he acquired his Masters degree at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1940, he worked for a short time as a journalist...
  
   (1916–1992)
• Ethel Schwabacher
  Ethel Schwabacher
  Ethel Kremer Schwabacher was a protege of Arshile Gorky, his first biographer, and herself a well-known abstract expressionist painter. Her daughter is the American writer and translator, Brenda Webster....
  
   (1903–1984)
• Sonia Sekula
  Sonia Sekula
  Sonia Sekula was a Swiss-born artist linked with the abstract expressionist movement.She was born in Lucerne on 8 April 1918 to a Swiss mother, Berta Huguenin , and a Hungarian father, Béla Sekula , a philatelist.She lived in America from 1936 to 1955.She attended Sarah Lawrence College.She met...
  
   (1918–1963)
• Charles Seliger
  Charles Seliger
  Charles Seliger was an American abstract expressionist painter. He was born in Manhattan June 3, 1926, and he died on 1 October 2009, in Westchester County, New York...
  
   (1926–2009)
• Kurt Seligmann
  Kurt Seligmann
  Kurt Seligmann was a Swiss-American Surrealist painter and engraver. He was known for his fantastic imagery of medieval troubadors and knights engaged in macabre rituals and inspired partially by the carnival held annually in his native Basel, Switzerland.He was born Kurt Leopold Seligmann in...
  
    (1900–1962)
• Thomas A. Sills (1914–2000)
• David Slivka (1914–2010)
• David Smith
  David Smith (sculptor)
  David Roland Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.-Biography:...
  
   (1906–1965)
• Hyde Solomon (1911–1982)
• George Spaventa (1918–1978)
• Ray Spillenger (1924-)
• Nora Speyer (1923-)
• Jack Squire (1927-)
• Theodoros Stamos
  Theodoros Stamos
  Theodoros Stamos , was a Greek American artist. He is one of the youngest painters of the original group of abstract expressionist painters , which included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko...
  
   (1922–1997)
• Richard Stankiewicz
  Richard Stankiewicz
  Richard Stankiewicz was an American sculptor, known for his work in scrap metal.Stankiewicz was born in Philadelphia, but spent his formative years in Detroit. He began painting and sculpting while in the United States Navy, in which he served from 1941 until 1947...
  
   (1922–1983)
• Joe Stefanelli
  Joe Stefanelli (painter)
  Joe Stefanelli also known as Joseph J. Stefanelli belonged to the New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose influence and artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized around the world...
  
   (1921-)
• John Stephan (1906–1994)
• Hedda Sterne
  Hedda Sterne
  Hedda Sterne was an artist best remembered as the only woman in a group of Abstract Expressionists known as "The Irascibles" which consisted of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and others...
  
   (1910-2011)
• Jean Steubing (NA)

T

• Anne Tabachnick (1927–1995)
• Tavelli (NA)
• Albert Terris (NA)
• Yvonne Thomas (1913–2009)
• Tolkach (NA)
• Bradley Walker Tomlin
  Bradley Walker Tomlin
  Bradley Walker Tomlin belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists. He participated in the famous ‘’Ninth Street Show.’’ According to John I. H...
  
   (1899–1953)
• Turku Trajan (1887–1957)
• Stanley Twardowicz (1917–2008)
• Cy Twombly
  Cy Twombly
  Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly, Jr. was an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors...
  
   (1928-2011)
• Jack Tworkov
  Jack Tworkov
  Jack Tworkov was a Polish born American abstract expressionist painter.He was born in Biała Podlaska, Russian Empire and immigrated to the United States in 1913 with his mother and younger sister who would later become known as Janice Biala...
  
   (1900–1982)

V

• Nicolai I. Vasilieff (1892–1970)
• Esteban Vicente
  Esteban Vicente
  Esteban Vicente Pérez , was an American painter born in Turégano, Spain. He was one of the first generation of New York School abstract expressionists.-Early life:...
  
   (1904–2001)
• Vaclav Vytlacil (1892–1984)

W

• Weil (NA)
• Michael (Corinne) West (1908–1991)
• Pennerton West (1913-)
• Steve Wheeler (1912–1992)
• Connie Whidden (NA)
• William White (NA)
• Norman Wiener (NA)
• Jane Wilson (1924-)

Y

• Taro Yamamoto
  Taro Yamamoto (artist)
  Taro Yamamoto belonged to the New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris...
  
   (1919–1993)
• Alice Yamin (NA)
• Manoucher Yektai
  Manoucher Yektai
  Manoucher Yektai belongs to the New York School Abstract Expressionist artists.-Biography:He dropped out of Tehran University, Fine Arts Faculty, without obtaining degree...
  
   (1922-)
• Adja Yunkers
  Adja Yunkers
  Adja Yunkers was an American abstract painter and printmaker. He was born in Riga, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire in 1900. He studied art in Leningrad, Berlin, Paris, and London. He lived in Paris for 14 years, and then moved to Stockholm in 1939. In Stockholm, he published and edited...
  
    (1900–1983)

African-American abstract expressionists of the 1950s

For African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 artists a barrier to success in the post-War

Post-War

Post-War is the fifth studio album by M. Ward. It was released on August 22, 2006 by Merge Records. It features the single "To Go Home," a cover of a song written by Daniel Johnston. Guest appearances were made by Jim James of My Morning Jacket , Neko Case and Mike Mogis...

 era

Era

An era is a commonly used word for long period of time. When used in science, for example geology, eras denote clearly defined periods of time of arbitrary but well defined length, such as for example the Mesozoic era from 252 Ma–66 Ma, delimited by a start event and an end event. When used in...

 was the prevailing blight of racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

 and segregation

Racial segregation

Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...

. This resulted in exclusion of artists of African-American origin from major exhibitions and critical attentions. The best evidence of this is the absence of African-American artists in the New York School Annuals between 1951 and 1957. These annual exhibitions represented a total of 265 New York School artists, none of whom were African-American.

Those artists would include the following:

• Charles Alston
  Charles Alston
  Charles Henry Alston was an African-American painter, sculptor, illustrator, muralist and teacher who lived and worked in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. Alston was active in the Harlem Renaissance; Alston was the first African American supervisor for the Works Progress Administration's...
  
   (1907–1977)
• Romare Bearden
  Romare Bearden
  Romare Bearden was an African American artist and writer. He worked in several media including cartoons, oils, and collage.-Education:...
  
   (1911–1988)
• Edward Clark
  Edward Clark (artist)
  Edward Clark also known as Ed Clark is an African American abstract expressionist painter and one of the early experimenters with shaped canvas in the 1950s.Edward Clark stated:-Biography:...
  
   (1926- )
• Beauford Delaney
  Beauford Delaney
  Beauford Delaney was an American modernist painter.-Early life:Beauford Delaney was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, in 1901. Delaney’s parents were prominent and respected members of Knoxville's black community. His father Samuel was both a barber and a Methodist minister...
  
   (1901–1979)
• Harlan Jackson (1918- )
• Norman Lewis
  Norman Lewis (artist)
  Norman W. Lewis was an African-American painter, scholar, and teacher. He is associated with Abstract Expressionism. Lewis was African-American, of Caribbean descent.-Early life and career:...
  
   (1909–1979)
• Thomas Sills
  Thomas Sills
  Thomas Sills was a painter and collagist and a participant in the New York Abstract Expressionist movement.-Early years:Thomas Sills was born and raised in Castalia, North Carolina. Before he got involved with painting, he worked in a greenhouse in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the color around...
  
   (1914–2000)
• Merton Simpson
  Merton Simpson
  Merton Daniel Simpson is an American abstract expressionist painter and African and tribal art collector.-Early life:...
  
   (1928-)
• Alma Thomas (1891–1978)
• Hale Woodruff
  Hale Woodruff
  Hale Aspacio Woodruff was an African American artist known for his murals, paintings, and prints. One example of his work, the three-panel Amistad Mutiny murals , can be found at Talladega College in Talladega County, Alabama...
  
   (1900–1980)

New York art scene in the late 1950s

Marilyn Stokstad

Marilyn Stokstad

Marilyn Stokstad is a professor of art history at the University of Kansas, and an author of art-history textbooks, the most recent of which is Art History . Her textbooks can be compared to Janson's Art History....

, the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 art historian

Art history

Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...

, wrote: ’’When the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 emerged from World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 as the most powerful nation in the world, its new stature was soon reflected in the arts. American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

s and architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

s-especially those living in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

-assumed the leadership in artistic innovation that by the late 1950s had been acknowledged across the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

, even in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. Critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

s, curator

Curator

A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...

s and art historians

Art history

Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...

, trying to follow art’s ‘mainstream,’ now focused on New York as the new center of modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

.’’

The post-World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 era

Era

An era is a commonly used word for long period of time. When used in science, for example geology, eras denote clearly defined periods of time of arbitrary but well defined length, such as for example the Mesozoic era from 252 Ma–66 Ma, delimited by a start event and an end event. When used in...

 highly benefited some of the artists who were early on recognized by the Art critics

Art criticism

Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art.Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty...

 of the post World War II era. According to
Irving Sandler

Irving Sandler

Irving Sandler is an American art critic and educator. He has provided numerous first hand accounts of American art, particularly around the abstract expressionist circles of the 1950s, where he managed the Downtown Tanager Gallery and co-ordinated the New York artists' 'Club' from 1955 to its...

, ‘’From 1947 to 1951, more than a dozen Abstract Expressionists achieved ‘breakthroughs’ to independent styles. Younger artists who entered their circle in the early fifties-the early wave of the second generation were also acclaimed, but with a few exceptions, their reputation had gone into decline by the end of the fifties.’’ (Sandler verified the arbitrary notion of “generation:” It refers to a group of artists close in age who live in the same neighborhood at the same time, and to a greater or lesser degree, know each other and partake of a similar sensibility, a shared outlook and aesthetic.)

Some of the New York artists having no galleries or means to get ahead took advantage of the GI Bill and left for Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 to later return with acclaim. Among them were Norman Bluhm and Sam Francis. The majority of artists from all across the US arrived in New York City to seek recognition. By the end of the decade the list of artists associated with the New York School had greatly increased. (see: Complete List of Artists' Participation in the New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals, 1951–1957)

A list of artists associated with the New York art scene of the 1950s and not included in the New York Annuals would include the following:

• Norman Bluhm
  Norman Bluhm
  Norman Bluhm , was an American painter classified as an abstract expressionist, and as an action painter.- Biography :...
  
   (1921–1999)
• Art Brenner
  Art Brenner
  Art Brenner is an American abstract sculptor and painter who has lived and worked in Paris since 1964.He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in cities such as Paris, London, Avignon, Barcelona, Brussels, Brest, Amsterdam, Heidelberg, Montreal, and Adelaide, Australia.His work is in public...
  
    (1924-)
• Judith Brown
  Judith Brown (sculptor)
  Judith Brown was a dancer and a sculptor who was drawn to images of the body in motion and its effect on the cloth surrounding it. She welded crushed automobile scrap metal into energetic moving torsos, horses, and flying draperies...
  
   (1931–1992)
• Mary Callery
  Mary Callery
  Mary Callery was an American artist known for her Modern and Abstract Expressionist sculpture. She was part of the New York School art movement of the 1940s, '50s and '60s....
  
   (1903–1977)
• John Chamberlain (1927-)
• Richard Diebenkorn
  Richard Diebenkorn
  Richard Diebenkorn was a well-known 20th century American painter. His early work is associated with Abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. His later work were instrumental to his achievement of worldwide acclaim.-Biography:Richard Clifford Diebenkorn Jr...
  
   (1922–1993)
• Jim Dine
  Jim Dine
  Jim Dine is an American pop artist. He is sometimes considered to be a part of the Neo-Dada movement. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, attended Walnut Hills High School, the University of Cincinnati, and received a BFA from Ohio University in 1957. He first earned respect in the art world with...
  
   (1935-)
• Mark di Suvero
  Mark di Suvero
  Marco Polo "Mark" di Suvero is an American abstract expressionist sculptor born Marco Polo Levi in Shanghai, China in 1933 to Italian expatriates. He immigrated to San Francisco, California in 1942 with his family. From 1953 to 1957, he attended the University of California, Berkeley to study...
  
   (1933-)
• Sam Francis
  Sam Francis
  Samuel Lewis Francis was an American painter and printmaker.-Early life:...
  
   (1923–1994)
• Arshile Gorky
  Arshile Gorky
  Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced of the Armenian genocide.-Early life:...
  
   (1904–1948)
• Red Grooms
  Red Grooms
  Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...
  
   (1937-)
• Raoul Hague (1905–1993)
• Al Held
  Al Held
  Al Held was an American Abstract expressionist painter. He was particularly well known for his large scale Hard-edge paintings.-Background and education:...
  
   (1928–2005)
• Paul Jenkins
  Paul Jenkins (United States painter)
  - Biography :He was born in 1923 in Kansas City, Missouri. In Kansas City, the artist met Frank Lloyd Wright who was commissioned by the artist's great-uncle, the Rev. Burris Jenkins, to rebuild his church after a fire. Also during his years in Kansas City, the young Jenkins visited Thomas Hart...
  
   (1923-)
• Jasper Johns
  Jasper Johns
  Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...
  
   (1930-)

• Allan Kaprow
  Allan Kaprow
  Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
  
   (1927–2006)
• Ellsworth Kelly
  Ellsworth Kelly
  Ellsworth Kelly is an American painter and sculptor associated with Hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and the Minimalist school. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing the simplicity of form found similar to the work of John McLaughlin. Kelly often employs bright colors to...
  
   (1923-)
• Morris Louis (1912–1962)
• Edward Meneeley
  Edward Meneeley
  Edward Meneeley is an American artist who works primarily in painting, sculpture, and printmaking.-Life:...
  
   (1927-)
• Barnett Newman
  Barnett Newman
  Barnett Newman was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.-Early life:...
  
   (1905–1970)
• Kenneth Noland
  Kenneth Noland
  Kenneth Noland was an American abstract painter. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School...
  
   (1924-)
• Claes Oldenburg
  Claes Oldenburg
  Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
  
   (1929-)
• Mark Rothko
  Mark Rothko
  Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...
  
   (1903–1970)
• George Segal
  George Segal (artist)
  George Segal was an American painter and sculptor associated with the Pop Art movement. He was presented with a National Medal of Arts in 1999.-Works:...
  
   (1924–2000)
• Leon Polk Smith
  Leon Polk Smith
  Leon Polk Smith was an American painter. His geometrically oriented abstract paintings were influenced by Piet Mondrian and his style has been associated with the Hard-edge school, of which he is considered one of the founders....
  
   (1906–1996)
• Clyfford Still
  Clyfford Still
  Clyfford Still was an American painter, and one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism.-Biography:...
  
   (1904–1980)
• Mark Tobey
  Mark Tobey
  Mark George Tobey was an American abstract expressionist painter, born in Centerville, Wisconsin. Widely recognized throughout the United States and Europe, Tobey is the most noted among the "mystical painters of the Northwest." Senior in age and experience, Tobey had a strong influence on the...
  
   (1890–1976)
• John von Wicht (1888–1970)
• Robert Whitman
  Robert Whitman
  Robert Whitman is an American artist best known for his seminal theater pieces of the early 1960s combining visual and sound images, actors, film, slides, and evocative props in environments of his own making...
  
   (1935-)

New York art scene in the late 1950s and 1960s

1957 represented the beginning of Pop Art and the following movements and/or trends. Painters, sculptors and printmakers associated with Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

, Action painting

Action painting

Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...

, Fluxus

Fluxus

Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...

, Color field painting

Color Field

Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists...

, Hard-edge painting

Hard-edge painting

Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting.-History of the term:The term was...

, Pop art

Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

, Minimal Art

Minimalism

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...

, Lyrical Abstraction

Lyrical Abstraction

Lyrical Abstraction is either of two related but distinctly separate trends in Post-war Modernist painting, and a third definition is the usage as a descriptive term. It is a descriptive term characterizing a type of abstract painting related to Abstract Expressionism; in use since the 1940s...

, and other movements associated with New York City. During the 1950s through the early 1960s the artists often congregated at the Cedar Tavern

Cedar Tavern

The Cedar Tavern was a bar and restaurant in New York City last at 82 University Place between 11th and 12th Streets. It was famous as a former hangout of many prominent Abstract Expressionist painters and beat writers...

 in Greenwich Village and during the mid 1960s through the early 1970s at Max's Kansas City

Max's Kansas City

Max's Kansas City was a nightclub and restaurant at 213 Park Avenue South, in New York City, which was a gathering spot for musicians, poets, artists and politicians in the 1960s and 1970s.-Origin of name:...

 on Park Avenue South between 17th and 18th Streets.

The list of such artists would include the following:

C

• John Connell
  John Connell
  John Connell was a contemporary American artist. His works included sculpture, painting, drawing, and writing....
  
   (1940-)
• Robert F. Conover (1920–1998)
• Lawrence Calcagno (1913–1993)
• Dan Christensen
  Dan Christensen
  Dan Christensen, the American abstract painter, was born in Cozad, Nebraska on October 6, 1942, he died in Easthampton, New York on January 20, 2007....
  
   (1942–2007)
• Chuck Close
  Chuck Close
  Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
  
   (1940-)

H

• Julius Hatofsky
  Julius Hatofsky
  According to the celebrated New York art critic Hilton Kramer:-Biography:Julius Hatofsky was born in Ellenville, in upstate New York, in 1922, and first studied art as a teenager in the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project art classes...
  
   (1922–2006)
• Burt Hasen (1921–2007)
• Eva Hesse
  Eva Hesse
  Eva Hesse , was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. -Early life:Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in Hamburg, Germany...
  
   (1936–1970)
• Budd Hopkins
  Budd Hopkins
  Budd Hopkins was an American painter, sculptor, and prominent figure in abduction phenomenon, and related UFO research.-Life:Born in 1931 and raised in Wheeling, West Virginia...
  
   (1931-)
• Ian Hornak
  Ian Hornak
  Ian Hornak was an American draughtsman, painter and printmaker associated with the Hyperrealist and Photorealist art movements.-Biography:...
  
   (1944-2002)

J

• Lenore Jaffee (1925-)
• Benjy Jay (1986-)
• Buffie Johnson (1912–2006)
• Ray Johnson
  Ray Johnson
  Raymond Edward Johnson , known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art...
  
   (1927–1995)
• Donald Judd
  Donald Judd
  Donald Clarence Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism . In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy...
  
   (1928–1994)

K

• Weldon Kees
  Weldon Kees
  Harry Weldon Kees was an American poet, painter, literary critic, novelist, jazz pianist, and short story writer...
  
   (1914–1955)
• Lyman Kipp
  Lyman Kipp
  Lyman Kipp is a sculptor and painter who creates pieces that are composed of strong vertical and horizontal objects and are often painted in bold primary colors recalling arrangements by De Stijl Constructivists...
  
   (1927-)
• Irving Kriesberg
  Irving Kriesberg
  Irving Kriesberg was an American painter whose work combined elements of Abstract Expressionism with figurative elements of human and animal forms...
  
   (1919–2009)
• Nicholas Krushenick
  Nicholas Krushenick
  Nicholas Krushenick was one of the forerunners of the pop art movement.Krushenick began showing his work publicly in New York in 1957, at the age of 28...
  
   (1929–1999)
• John Krushenick
  John Krushenick
  John Krushenick painter and co-founder of the Brata Gallery in New York City. He studied with Hans Hofmann, exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City, and MoMA Tokyo. He and brother Nicholas Krushenick opened an artists' cooperative called the Brata Gallery in the late 1950s...
  
   (1927–1998)

L

• Ronnie Landfield
  Ronnie Landfield
  Ronnie Landfield is an American abstract painter. During his early career from the mid-1960s through the 1970s his paintings were associated with Lyrical Abstraction, , and he was represented by the David Whitney Gallery and the André Emmerich Gallery.Landfield is...
  
   (1947-)
• Sol LeWitt
  Sol LeWitt
  Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....
  
   (1928–2007)
• Roy Lichtenstein
  Roy Lichtenstein
  Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
  
   (1923–1997)
• Lee Lozano (1930–1999)

M

• Robert Mangold
  Robert Mangold
  Robert Mangold is an American minimalist artist.- Works :“Robert Mangold’s paintings,” wrote Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times in 1997, “are more complicated to describe than they seem, which is partly what’s good about them: the way they invite intense scrutiny, which, in the nature of good...
  
   (1937-)
• Brice Marden
  Brice Marden
  Brice Marden , is an American artist, generally described as Minimalist, although his work defies specific categorization. He lives in New York and Eagles Mere.Marden is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery.-Life:...
  
   (1938-)
• Ezio Martinelli
  Ezio Martinelli
  Ezio Martinelli was an American artist who belonged to the New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose influence and artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized around the world...
  
   (1913-1980)
• Edward Meneeley
  Edward Meneeley
  Edward Meneeley is an American artist who works primarily in painting, sculpture, and printmaking.-Life:...
  
   (1927-)
• Elizabeth Murray
  Elizabeth Murray (artist)
  Elizabeth Murray was an American painter, printmaker and draughtsman. Her works are in many major public collections, including those of the Solomon R...
  
   (1940–2007)

O

• Doug Ohlson
  Doug Ohlson
  Douglas Dean Ohlson was an American abstract artist who specialized in geometric patterns.Ohlson was born on November 18, 1936, in Cherokee, Iowa and attended Bethel College before serving in the United States Marine Corps...
  
   (1936–2010)
• Frank O'Hara
  Frank O'Hara
  Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...
  
   (1926–1966)
• Jules Olitski
  Jules Olitski
  Jules Olitski was an American abstract painter, printmaker, and sculptor.-Early life:Olitski was born Jevel Demikovski in Snovsk, in the Russian SFSR , a few months after his father, a commissar, was executed by the Russian government...
  
   (1922–2007)
• Joe Overstreet (1933)

R

• Paul Rand
  Paul Rand
  Paul Rand Paul Rand Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum, (August 15, 1914 — November 26, 1996) was an American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Enron, Westinghouse, ABC, and Steve Jobs’ NeXT...
  
   (1914–1996)
• Peter Reginato
  Peter Reginato
  Peter Reginato , is an American abstract sculptor.Reginato was born in Dallas, Texas, but grew up in the hills outside Oakland, California and he attended the San Francisco Art Institute. He began making abstract sculpture in 1965 and moved to New York City in 1966 to pursue his career as a sculptor...
  
   (1945-)
• Leonard Rosenfeld
  Leonard Rosenfeld
  Leonard Rosenfeld was an American expressionist artist who was born in Brooklyn, New York. In the Post-World War II era, Rosenfeld associated with a group of artist known as the New York School...
  
   (1926–2009)
• James Rosenquist
  James Rosenquist
  James Rosenquist is an American artist and one of the protagonists in the pop-art movement.-Background and education:...
  
   (1933-)
• Theodore Roszak
  Theodore Roszak (artist)
  Theodore Roszak was an American sculptor and painter. He was born in Posen, Prussia , now Poznań, Poland, as a son of Polish parents, and emigrated to the United States at the age of two...
  
   (1907–1981)
• Jack Roth
  Jack Roth
  Jack Roth was a 20th century American painter who developed a style as an Abstract Expressionist, and as a Color Field painter...
  
   (1927-2004)[

S

• Lucas Samaras
  Lucas Samaras
  Lucas Samaras , is an artist, born in Kastoria, Greece. He studied at Rutgers University on a scholarship, where he met Allan Kaprow and George Segal. While at Rutgers, he joined Gamma Sigma . He participated in Kaprow's "Happenings," and posed for Segal's plaster sculptures...
  
   (1936-)
• Alan Saret (1944-)
• Carolee Schneemann
  Carolee Schneemann
  Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist, known for her discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. from Bard College and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois. Her work is primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the...
  
   (1939)
• Sean Scully
  Sean Scully
  Sean Scully is an Irish-born American painter and printmaker who has twice been named a Turner Prize nominee. His work is collected in major museums worldwide.-Life and work:...
  
   (1945-)
• Richard Serra
  Richard Serra
  Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
  
   (1939-)
• Harold Shapinsky
  Harold Shapinsky
  Harold Shapinsky was an American abstract expressionist painter, born in Brooklyn, New York.-Family:His father was David Shapinsky , a "cutter" in the garment trades...
  
   (1925–2004)
• Alan Shields (1944–2005)
• Kenneth Showell (1939–1997)
• Peter Shulman (1937-)
• Aaron Siskind
  Aaron Siskind
  Aaron Siskind was an American abstract expressionist photographer. In his biography he wrote that he began his foray into photography when he received a camera for a wedding gift and began taking pictures on his honeymoon. He quickly realized the artistic potential this offered...
  
   (1903–1991)
• Tony Smith
  Tony Smith (sculptor)
  Tony Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture.-Education:...
  
   (1912–1980)
• Robert Smithson
  Robert Smithson
  Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
  
   (1938–1973)
• Kenneth Snelson
  Kenneth Snelson
  Kenneth Snelson is a contemporary sculptor and photographer. His sculptural works are composed of flexible and rigid components arranged according to the idea of 'tensegrity', although Snelson does not use the term....
  
   (1927-)
• Keith Sonnier
  Keith Sonnier
  Keith Sonnier is a Postminimalist, performance, video and light artist. Sonnier was one of the first artists to use light in sculpture in the 1960s, and has been one of the most successful with this technique...
  
   (1941-)
• Nancy Spero
  Nancy Spero
  Nancy Spero was an American visual artist.-Life and work:Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She was married to, and collaborated with artist Leon Golub....
  
   (1926-)
• Frank Stella
  Frank Stella
  Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...
  
   (1936 -)

W

• Andy Warhol
  Andy Warhol
  Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
  
   (1928–1987)
• Tom Weatherly (1942-)
• Lawrence Weiner
  Lawrence Weiner
  Lawrence Weiner was a central figure in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s His work often takes the form of typographic texts.- Life and career :...
  
   (1942-)
• Neil Williams (1934–1988)
• Hannah Wilke
  Hannah Wilke
  Hannah Wilke was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist.-Biography:...
  
   (1940–1993)

Books

• Philip Pavia; Natalie Edgar, Club without walls: selection from the Journals of Philip Pavia (New York : Midmarch Arts, ©2007.)
• Irving Sandler, ‘’The New York School: the painters & sculptors of the fifties,’’ (New York; London : Harper and Row, 1978.) ISBN 0-06-438505-1 9780064385053
• Irving Sandler, ‘’ The triumph of American painting: a history of abstract expressionism,’’ (New York; London : Harper and Row, 1977.) ISBN 0-06-430075-7 : 9780064300759
• Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4
• Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
• Statutes of Liberty, The New York School of Poets, Geoff Ward, Second Edition, 2001
• The New American Poetry, 1945-1960
  The New American Poetry 1945-1960
  The New American Poetry 1945–1960 was a poetry anthology edited by Donald Allen, and published in 1960. It aimed to pick out the "third generation" of American modernist poets, and included quite a number of poems fresh from the little magazines of the late 1950s. In the longer term it attained a...
  
  , Donald Merriam Allen, 1969
• An Anthology of New York Poets, Ron Padgett
  Ron Padgett
  Ron Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Bean Spasms, Padget's first collection of poems, was published in 1967 and written with Ted Berrigan...
  
   (ed.) and David Shapiro
  David Shapiro (poet)
  David Shapiro is an American poet, literary critic, and art historian. He has written some twenty volumes of poetry, literary, and art criticism...
  
   (ed.), 1970
• Frank O'Hara: Poet Among Painters, Marjorie Perloff
  Marjorie Perloff
  Marjorie Perloff is an Austrian-born U.S. poetry critic.Perloff was born Gabriele Mintz into a secularized Jewish family in Vienna. Faced with Nazi terror, her family emigrated in 1938 when she was six-and-a-half, going first to Zürich and then to the United States, settling in Riverdale, New York...
  
  , 1977
• The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets, David Lehman
  David Lehman
  David Lehman is a poet and the series editor for The Best American Poetry series. He teaches at The New School in New York City.-Career:...
  
  , 1998
• Maurice Tuchman (ed.), The New York School, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1965.
• Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art : Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1983.

External links

• 9th Street Art Exhibition-abstract expressionist artists reminisce—video from youtube.com
• Source of Creativity-Discussion with New York School artists of the 1950s— video from youtube.com
• New York School 1950s-Growth of Artistic Ideas Toward the Realm of the Spiritual— video from youtube.com
• Art Criticism, Press Coverage & Art of the 1950s-Abstract Expressionism 1950s Part 1— video from youtube.com
• Art Criticism, Press Coverage & Art of the 1950s-Abstract Expressionism 1950s Part 2— video from youtube.com
• Beginning of the New York School 1950s-Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s— video from youtube.com
• James Brooks Abstract Expressionism-New York School 1950s action painting— video from youtube.com
• Nicolas Carone-Abstract Expressionism-Artist of the 9th St. Show— video from youtube.com
• Nanno de Groot Abstract Expressionism-New York School 1950s— video from youtube.com
• Perle Fine Abstract Expressionism-1950s New York action painter— video from youtube.com
• Albert Kotin Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School 1950s action painting— video from youtube.com
• Conrad Marca-Relli Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School collage-painter— video from youtube.com
• Kyle Morris Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School 1950s— video from youtube.com
• Robert Richenburg Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School 1950s— video from youtube.com
• Joe Stefanelli Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School 1950s— video from youtube.com