section_path: Painting styles/Western/Abstract styles
section_name: Abstract styles
paragraph_text: Abstract styles
  
  Abstract painting uses a visual language of form, colour and line to create a composition that may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Abstract expressionism was an American post- World War II art movement that combined the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools—such as Futurism, Bauhaus and Cubism, and the image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic.
  
  Action painting, sometimes called gestural abstraction, is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist. The style was widespread from the 1940s until the early 1960s and is closely associated with abstract expressionism (some critics have used the terms "action painting" and "abstract expressionism" interchangeably).
  
  Other modernist styles include: