"The dominant trend in western painting throughout the 1950s began with a handful of American artists later termed Abstract Expressionists. Their paintings were often made of shapes, lines, and forms not meant to depict a "reality" from the visible world. They believed that non-representational painting could express spiritual and emotional truths in the most direct way. These artists often used a spontaneous and physical process in order to present an immediate response to emotion.

The Abstract Expressionists addressed the great questions of human existence. The internal psychological struggle, the external struggle of man against nature, the spiritual quest for God -- these were topics that these artists felt needed to find expression in abstraction. For the Abstract Expressionists, understanding the process of painting meant understanding something at the core of the human desire to express oneself. In the end, making the process of painting an existential endeavor may have been their major achievement."

(http://www.pbs.org/wnet/

americanmasters/database/abstract_

expressionism.html)