New York School

An interdisciplinary, avant-garde movement of painters, sculptors, poets, dancers, musicians, and composers active in New York City in the 1950s and ’60s. These visual artists, many of whom lived and congregated in Greenwich Village, made primarily abstract paintings, often using gestural brushstrokes and large fields of color. Though most of the artists associated with the New York School were white men, many of whom immigrated from Europe or were first-generation Americans, women and nonwhite artists also made significant contributions to the movement. These artists’ notoriety helped shift the center of the art world from Paris to New York in the wake of World War II. The New York School encompasses Abstract Expressionism and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.