GeezerVison

Abstract Imagists is a term derived from a 1961 exhibition in the Guggenheim Museum, New York called American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists. This exhibition was the first in the series of programs for the investigation of tendencies in American and European painting and sculpture.^[1]

It had been recognized that the paintings of Josef Albers, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Clyfford Still and Robert Motherwell were all very different yet the symbolic content was achieved "through dramatic statement of isolated and highly simplified elements."^[2] In many cases the dramatic simplification was achieved by the use of:

• geometric means: Josef Albers; Franz Kline; Hans Hofmann
• compression: Grace Hartigan; George McNeil
• intricate elaboration of canvas surfaces: Richard Pousette-Dart; Robert Richenburg; John Ferren; Jimmy Ernst;
• isolated shapes or signs: Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell
• detailed over-all patterning of the canvas: William Baziotes
• simplified structure through the dominance of the large, unified color shapes: James Brooks, Esteban Vicente, Adja Yunkers, Cameron Booth; Giorgio Cavallon

In some cases there was a "loss of the feeling and immediacy" in the work.

Sources:^[3]

• Perle Fine (1908–1988)^[4]
• Ilse Getz (1917–1992)
• Rollin Crampton (1896–1970)^[5]
• Robert Goodnough (1917–2010)
• David Hare (1917–1992)^[6]
• Buffie Johnson (1912–2006)
• William King (1925-)
• Gabriel Kohn (1910–1975)
• George Ortman (1926–2015)
• James Rosati, (1911–1988)^[7]

• New York Figurative Expressionism
• American Figurative Expressionism
• Expressionism
• Abstract Expressionism
• New York School

Related styles, trends, schools or movements

• Action painting
• Abstract expressionism
• New York School
• Color field painting
• Hard-edge painting
• Minimalism
• All-over painting
• Pattern and Decoration

• Virgil Baker, From realism to reality in recent American painting. (Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1959.)
• Bernard H. Friedman, School of New York: some younger artists. (New York, Grove Press [©1959])
• Sam Hunter, Modern American Painting and Sculpture. ([New York, Dell Pub. Co., 1959])
• Harold Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New. (New York, Horizon Press, 1959)
• György Kepes, The Visual Arts Today. (Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press [1960])