Action Painting: Gestural, Physical Application of Paint

In 1952, the art critic Harold Rosenberg published an essay in ARTnews that changed how people talked about painting. "At a certain moment," he wrote, "the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze, or 'express' an object." The canvas was no longer a surface for depicting something. It was a site where the artist's physical engagement with paint became the subject itself. Rosenberg called this action painting, and the label stuck.

Action painting is a style of abstract painting in which the act of applying paint, the gesture, the physical movement of the artist's body, is the primary content of the work. The paint is applied spontaneously, vigorously, and often unconventionally: poured, dripped, flung, smeared, or slashed onto the canvas rather than carefully brushed. The term was coined by Rosenberg to describe the work of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and other Abstract Expressionists working in New York in the late 1940s and 1950s. What resulted on the canvas was, in Rosenberg's words, "not a picture but an event."

This entry covers what action painting is, how it emerged from Surrealism and existentialist philosophy, which artists defined it, and how to read it when you stand in front of one of these canvases.

What Is Action Painting and How Does It Work?

Action painting is predicated on the idea that the creative process is a dialogue between the artist and the canvas. Each mark the artist makes affects the next mark. The painter responds to what is already on the surface, and the painting evolves through this back-and-forth rather than from a preconceived plan. As Rosenberg explained, "Each stroke had to be a decision and was answered by a new question."

The technique draws on automatism, the Surrealist practice of making marks without conscious control, which was developed in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Artists like Joan Miro and Andre Masson used automatic drawing to bypass rational thought and access the unconscious. The Abstract Expressionists adopted this approach but intensified it, scaling it up to monumental canvases where the artist's full-body movement became part of the process. Pollock placed his canvases on the floor and moved around them, dripping paint from a can or trailing it from a stick. De Kooning used large brushes to make slashing, aggressive marks. Franz Kline painted with housepainter's brushes that produced broad, calligraphic strokes.

The Tate's overview of action painters notes that Pollock "famously placed his canvas on the ground and danced around it pouring paint from the can or trailing it from the brush or a stick. In this way the action painters directly placed their inner impulses onto the canvas." Read the full description at Tate.

Origins and History

Action painting emerged in New York City in the late 1940s, though its roots go deeper. The Surrealist emigres who arrived in New York during World War II, including Andre Breton, Max Ernst, and Yves Tanguy, brought with them the philosophy of automatism and the idea that art should come from the unconscious mind. The young American painters who encountered them, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, and Motherwell, absorbed these ideas but rejected the Surrealists' figurative imagery. They wanted to paint abstractly, but with the same psychological intensity.

Pollock's breakthrough came in 1947, when he began pouring and dripping thinned paint onto raw canvas laid on the floor of his studio in Springs, Long Island. This was a radical departure from traditional painting methods. No brush, no easel, no primed canvas. The paintings were entirely nonobjective, and their scale was enormous. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's essay on Abstract Expressionism notes that "in their subject matter (or seeming lack of one), scale (huge), and technique (no brush, no stretcher bars, no easel), the works were shocking to many viewers." Read the full essay at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Rosenberg's 1952 essay gave the approach a name and a theoretical framework. He wove together Marxist theory, existentialist philosophy, and his observations of artists in their studios to articulate what made this painting different. The Art Story's overview of action painting notes that "Rosenberg's theory of Action Painting was largely overshadowed by Clement Greenberg's more formalist readings of Abstract Expressionist painting," but that "many scholars have worked in recent years to rehabilitate Rosenberg's contributions." Read the analysis at The Art Story.

Key Artists and Paintings

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)

Pollock is the artist most synonymous with action painting. His drip paintings from 1947 to 1951 are the defining works of the style. Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) (1950, Metropolitan Museum of Art) is a quintessential drip painting: an all-over composition of black, brown, and white enamel paint, with Pollock's gestures visible in every loop and spatter. Full Fathom Five (1947, Museum of Modern Art) incorporates nails, tacks, buttons, keys, coins, and cigarettes embedded in the paint surface. Pollock described his process: "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, because the painting has a life of its own."

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)

De Kooning's action painting is more turbulent and more figurative than Pollock's. His Excavation (1950, Art Institute of Chicago) is an all-over abstract composition of slashing white and black strokes with flashes of color. His Woman series, beginning with Woman I (1950-1952, Museum of Modern Art), combines aggressive gestural paint handling with a distorted but recognizable female figure. De Kooning alternated between abstraction and figuration throughout his career, which made him a more complex case than Pollock within the action painting framework.

Franz Kline (1910-1962)

Kline's paintings are built from broad, calligraphic strokes of black and white. Chief (1950, Museum of Modern Art) and Mahoning (1956, Whitney Museum of American Art) use housepainter's brushes to create marks that look like enlarged brush calligraphy. Kline's gestures are emphatic and direct, with no drips or splatter. The paint is applied in single, confident strokes that fill the canvas edge to edge.

Lee Krasner (1908-1984)

Krasner, who was married to Pollock and whose own career was long overshadowed by his, produced powerful action paintings in her own right. Her The Seasons (1957, Whitney Museum of American Art) uses large, sweeping strokes of paint in a palette of earth tones and blues. Krasner's work has been increasingly recognized in recent decades as a significant contribution to Abstract Expressionism in its own right.

Arshile Gorky (c. 1904-1948)

Gorky is the bridge between Surrealism and action painting. His late works, like The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944, Albright-Knox Art Gallery), use automatic drawing and biomorphic forms to create paintings that are both abstract and deeply personal. Gorky's influence on Pollock and de Kooning was direct and acknowledged.

How to Spot Action Painting

Look for visible evidence of the artist's physical process. Drips, spatters, footprints, handprints, and the tracks of brushes dragged through wet paint are all signs of action painting. The surface is not smooth or controlled. It records the artist's movements with the fidelity of a seismograph.

The composition is typically "all-over," meaning the marks extend to the edges of the canvas with no central focal point. This is a hallmark of Pollock's drip paintings and distinguishes them from earlier abstract art, which usually had a figure-ground relationship. In action painting, figure and ground are the same thing. The entire surface is equally active.

At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, you can see Pollock's Autumn Rhythm and One: Number 31 (1950) in person. Stand close enough to see the individual drips and spatters, then step back. The painting resolves into a unified field from a distance, but up close it is a record of physical action. That tension between proximity and distance is what makes action painting distinct from other abstract styles.

Related Techniques

Action painting is one of two major strands of Abstract Expressionism. The other is Color Field painting, practiced by Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, which suppresses visible brushwork in favor of large, open areas of color. The two approaches share the same historical moment and the same ambition to make abstract painting emotionally powerful, but they look completely different. Action painting also connects to impasto, since the physical application of paint often produces thick, textured surfaces. For broader context, read our blog post on how to read a painting, or explore our guide to different painting techniques.

See Action Painting in Person

Action painting is best experienced in front of the actual canvases, where the scale and the physical evidence of the artist's process have their full impact. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has the strongest collection, including Pollock's Autumn Rhythm, One: Number 31, and Full Fathom Five, as well as de Kooning's Woman I. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30).

For a broader view of Abstract Expressionism, visit the Whitney Museum of American Art, which holds works by Krasner and Kline, or the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, which has a significant Gorky collection. The Tate Modern in London also holds important works by Pollock and de Kooning. Seeing these paintings in person makes clear why Rosenberg called them events rather than pictures. The canvas is not a window onto a scene. It is a record of an encounter between a body and a surface. For more on the broader movement, read our entries on Color Field painting and impasto, or explore our post on how to read a painting.