An art tendency emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century. Leaving all representational depiction behind, it does not lay claim to the reproduction of visible reality.

Often also referred to as informal painting (French: art informel). The pictorial conception of the painting style developed in New York in 1946/47 leads to the viewer being addressed directly due to the fact that the artist’s spontaneous expression manifests itself on the large-scale canvas typically employed.

A form of Abstract Expressionism practised by Jackson Pollock. He dripped or hurled paint directly onto canvasses lying on the floor (drip painting). The immediate, spontaneous dynamic of movement was thus to be illustrated, the artist’s conscious influence reduced to a minimum.

A term for works executed by autodidactic artists outside the established art system: usually by psychiatric patients, prisoners, outsiders or social non-conformists of all kinds. In 1945, the French painter Jean Dubuffet referred to this art untouched by aesthetic conventions as brut (French for “crude,” “unspoiled,” “raw”).

(French for “art without form”) An abstract style emerging in Paris in 1946/47. In contrast to geometric abstraction, Art Informel abandons demarcated forms and a fixed set of rules for composition. Emotion and spontaneity are the prime focus, and are expressed – free of all rules and rational pictorial solutions – in informal abstract painting. Important representatives were Jean Fautrier, Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung, Wols and Emil Schumacher.