Tachisme

Tachisme (alternative spelling: Tachism, derived from the French word tache, stain) is a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The term is said to have been first used with regards to the movement in 1951. It is often considered to be the European equivalent to abstract expressionism, although there are stylistic differences (American abstract expressionism tended to be more “aggressively raw” than tachisme). It was part of a larger postwar movement known as Art Informel (or Informel), which abandoned geometric abstraction in favour of a more intuitive form of expression, similar to action painting. Another name for Tachism is Abstraction lyrique (related to American Lyrical Abstraction). COBRA is also related to Tachisme, as is Japan’s Gutai group.

Term often used interchangeably with art informel or Lyrical Abstraction and applied to the movement in abstract art that flourished in Europe, especially in France, in the late 1940s and 1950s As early as 1899 Félix Fénéon referred to the work of the Impressionists as ‘tachiste’ to distinguish it from the more studied technique of the Derived from the French word signifying a blot, stain or mark, the term emphasizes the spontaneous gestural quality that characterizes much of this work It thus refers more specifically to the branch of Art informel closest in spirit and technique to automatism, in that the painted marks are presented as virtually unmediated by the conscious mind, and as a direct counterpart to the work of American Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Sam Francis Though often used more generally, thus defined the term best describes the work of artists such as Hans Hartung, Wols, Georges Mathieu, Henri Michaux and Pierre Soulages Mathieu, for instance, adopted a gestural, calligraphic style in works such as Capetians Everywhere (1954; Paris, Pompidou) By contrast other painters associated with Art informel, for example Jean Bazaine, Alfred Manessier and Serge Poliakoff, favoured a more controlled approach both in their composition and in their use of colour

After World War II the term School of Paris often referred to Tachisme, the European equivalent of American abstract expressionism. Important proponents were Jean-Paul Riopelle, Wols, Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Soulages, Nicolas de Staël, Hans Hartung, Gérard Schneider, Serge Poliakoff, Georges Mathieu and Jean Messagier, among several others. (See list of artists below.)

According to Chilvers, the term tachisme “was first used in this sense in about 1951 (the French critics Charles Estienne and Pierre Guéguen have each been credited with coining it) and it was given wide currency by [French critic and painter] Michel Tapié in his book Un Art autre (1952).”

Tachisme was a reaction to Cubism and is characterized by spontaneous brushwork, drips and blobs of paint straight from the tube, and sometimes scribbling reminiscent of calligraphy.

Tachisme is closely related to Informalism or Art Informel, which, in its 1950s French art-critical context, referred not so much to a sense of “informal art” as “a lack or absence of form itself”–non-formal or un-form-ulated–and not a simple reduction of formality or formalness. Art Informel was more about the absence of premeditated structure, conception or approach (sans cérémonie) than a mere casual, loosened or relaxed art procedure.

History
The term “tachisme” was first used around 1880 to define a variant of pointillism. It then runs the newspapers with all the isms through which designate the artistic currents of the time. The critic Félix Fénéon uses it in 1889 to describe the technique which, in 1862, earned their name from the Italian macchiaioli, of which a painting by Giovanni Fattori was exhibited in 1867 in Florence under the title Le macchiaiole (“Small spots”).

Maurice Denis still uses it in 1909 for wild animals.

The critic Pierre Guéguen uses it pejoratively in 1951.

It was then reused in 1952 on the initiative of the critic Michel Tapié in his book Another art to designate one of the aspects of the informal art, which corresponds to the gestural techniques equivalent to those appeared from 1946 at Jackson Pollock within of abstract expressionism and which will be described as action painting by the American critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952.

The expression will also be used in 1954, by the critic Charles Estienne, to define in particular the work of Hartung, Riopelle and Soulages, then in his work L’Art in Paris 1945-1966.

This style of painting, which is a reaction to cubism and geometric abstraction, is characterized by the execution of splashes of color resulting from splashes, brush splashes or spontaneous jets of paint on the canvas laid vertically or horizontally, by drips, possibly made with containers pierced using the technique used by Jackson Pollock or directly from the tube as in Georges Mathieu, sometimes with some reminiscences of calligraphy, especially in the drawing.

Tachism claims to express itself in pictorial material alone and is thus also opposed to the abstract European painting of the 1940s and 1950s, which, while repudiating the figurative content, generally remains faithful to classical values of composition.

There are also some beginnings among the surrealists who experimented with various techniques and forms of automatism (Picabia, The Blessed Virgin, 1920, MNAM, Paris). The giclées of paint used by Max Ernst and André Masson around 1940, purely surrealistic by the role played by chance, are “tachists” before the letter and could even exert a direct influence on the dripping of Pollock during the stay of Masson and Ernst in the United States during theSecond World War.

Artists
Pierre Alechinsky (born 1927) – Cobra group
Karel Appel (1921-2006) – Cobra group
Frank Avray Wilson (1914-2009)
Jean René Bazaine (1904–2001)
Roger Bissière (1888–1964)
Ferruccio Bortoluzzi (1920-2007)
Norman Bluhm (1921-1999) – American associated with this movement
Bram Bogart (1921-2012) – Cobra group
Alexander Bogen (1916-2010)
Denis Bowen (1921-2006)
Camille Bryen (1902–1977)
Alberto Burri (1915–1995)
Beauford Delaney (1901–1979) – American associated with this movement
Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)
Agenore Fabbri (1911 – 1998)
Jean Fautrier (1898–1964)
Lucio Fontana (1899–1968)
Sam Francis (1923–1994) – American associated with this movement
Elaine Hamilton (1920–2010) – American associate of Tapié, influenced by this movement
Hans Hartung (1904–1989)
Jacques Hérold (1910–1987)
Laurent Jiménez-Balaguer (born 1928)
Paul Jenkins (1923-2012) – American associated with this movement
Asger Jorn (1914-1973) – Cobra group
Karel Kuklík (born 1937) – Czech photographer regarded as a representative of Informel in photography.
René Laubies (1922–2006)
André Lanskoy (1902–1976)
François Lanzi (1916-1988)
Georges Mathieu (1921-2012)
Jean Messagier (1920-1999)
Henri Michaux (1899–1984)
Jean Miotte (born 1926)
Ludwig Merwart (1913–1979)
Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902–1968) – German influenced by this movement
Gen Paul (1895–1975)
Serge Poliakoff (1906–1969)
Marie Raymond (1908-1989)
Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002)
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908–1992)
Emilio Scanavino (1922–1986)
Gérard Schneider (1896–1986)
Emil Schumacher (1912-1999)
Pierre Soulages (born 1919)
Nicolas de Staël (1914–1955)
Pierre Tal-Coat (1905-1985) – French
Michel Tapié (1909-1987)
Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012)
Bram van Velde (1895–1981)
Louis Van Lint (1909-1986)
François Willi Wendt (1909-1970)
Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze) (1913–1951)
Zao Wou Ki (1921-2013)

Source from Wikipedia