Tachisme

Tachisme (alternative spelling: Tachism, derived from the French word tache, stain; French pronunciation: [taʃism] ) is a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The term is said to have been first used with regard to the movement in 1951. It is often considered to be the European response and 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. 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.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Tachisme”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Tachisme is French style of abstract painting, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 14 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶