Tachisme

Tachisme is a post-World War II European painting style characterized by spontaneous brushwork, blotches of color, and an emphasis on gestural immediacy. Emerging in the mid-1940s and labeled in French art criticism of the 1950s, it formed part of a broader rejection of prewar figurative traditions embraced by groups and figures across France, Italy, Spain, and Belgium. Critics and curators placed it in dialogue with contemporaneous movements in New York City, Paris, and London.

Definition and Origins

Tachisme originated amid postwar debates involving critics, dealers, and artists active in Paris, Nice, Rome, Milan, and Brussels. Commentators in journals associated with Galerie Maeght, Galerie Daniel Cordier, and newspapers such as Le Monde and Combat coined terms situating painters alongside practitioners of Art Informel and Lyrical Abstraction. Influential exhibitions at institutions including the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, and galleries linked to Pierre Matisse and Peggy Guggenheim helped define its public profile. The label intersected with debates involving critics and historians such as Michel Tapié, Roger van Gindertael, and curators like Jean-Pierre Muelas and Nicole Éric.

Key Artists and Works

Major figures associated with the style include Jean Dubuffet, Georges Mathieu, Pierre Soulages, Wols, Hans Hartung, Zao Wou-Ki, Serge Poliakoff, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Alberto Burri. Important works and series by these artists were shown alongside pieces by Antoni Tàpies, Sonia Delaunay, Nicolas de Staël, Étienne-Martin, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and Joan Miró in exhibitions curated by Michel Tapié, Katharina Sykora, and Denise Rene. Collectors and museums such as the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Tate Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and private collections assembled canonical canvases by Pierre Soulages' series of black paintings, Georges Mathieu's calligraphic compositions, and Jean Dubuffet's textured surfaces. Lesser-known contributors include Jean Fautrier, Jean Messagier, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Karel Appel, Corneille (artist), Pierre Alechinsky, Antonio Saura, Miquel Barceló, and Eduardo Chillida.

Styles and Techniques

Practitioners used varied methods: spontaneous brushstroke, dripping, staining, scraping, impasto, collage, and the application of non-traditional materials. Techniques overlapped with those used by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Joan Mitchell, and Franz Kline in New York City, while drawing on European precedents found in works by Paul Cézanne, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Pablo Picasso. Artists experimented with pigments, tar, burlap, and metal leaf as seen in works by Alberto Burri, Jean Dubuffet, and Antoni Tàpies, and adopted rapid execution favored by Georges Mathieu and Hans Hartung. Workshops, studios, and collaborative projects linked to CoBrA (avant-garde movement), Salon de Mai, and the School of Paris served as testing grounds for material innovation.

Critical Reception and Influence

Initial critical reception was mixed: champions like Michel Tapié, Pierre Restany, and Michel Ragon praised its authenticity, while conservative critics at venues such as Le Figaro and some curators at the Musée du Louvre expressed skepticism. International dealers including Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Samuel Kootz, and Paul Rosenberg helped export canvases to collectors such as Peggy Guggenheim and Saul Steinberg, influencing acquisitions by the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou. The style impacted postwar practices across Europe, informing movements like Informalism in Spain, Tachisme-adjacent painting in Italy, and later currents including Minimalism and Neo-Expressionism. Educators and institutions such as the École des Beaux-Arts, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and studios in Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés transmitted techniques to generations of artists including Brice Marden, Anselm Kiefer, Julian Schnabel, and Gerhard Richter.

Relationship to Abstract Expressionism and Informalism

Tachisme was frequently juxtaposed with Abstract Expressionism from New York City and the wider European category Art Informel. Debates among critics like Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Michel Tapié emphasized differences in temperament, method, and cultural context: Abstract Expressionism often centralized the studio as arena and the individual artist-as-action figure, while Tachisme shared affinities with Informalism's emphasis on materiality and spontaneity found in exhibitions at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles and shows organized by Galerie Beyeler. Transatlantic exhibitions and exchanges involving institutions such as the Carnegie Institute, the Whitney Museum, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection fostered dialogue between proponents like Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Georges Mathieu, and Jean Dubuffet, producing hybrid practices that would feed into later developments of European postwar art and global contemporary painting.

Category:Art movements