The turning point

The late 1940s and early 1950s saw a revolution in art, a revolution led by a group of American painters who for a brief period all lived, worked, and exhibited in the same city. The art world was brilliantly transformed by the Abstract Expressionists - Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Franz Kline, David Smith, and others. Like the Impressionists before them, they shared a vision even though they worked in highly individual styles. They were the first American artists to dominate the art world, and they shifted the capital of this world from Paris to New York City. In 1950, each of the major Abstract Expressionist painters exhibited, and some showed the best work of their lives. In that year critics, curators, collectors, and the artists themselves all realized that something extraordinary was happening in the art world, something new, different, and exciting. Using the pivotal year of 1950, April Kingsley examines each artist's work and, month by month, takes us through the year as she profiles the artists of the New York School in a brilliant group portrait.