Tachisme (alternative spelling:Tachism, derived from the French wordtache, stain;French pronunciation:[taʃism]ⓘ) is a French style ofabstractpainting popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The term is said to have been first used with regards to the movement in 1951.[1] It is often considered to be the European response and equivalent toabstract expressionism,[2] although there are stylistic differences (American abstract expressionism tended to be more "aggressively raw" than tachisme).[1] It was part of a larger postwar movement known asArt Informel (orInformel),[2] which abandoned geometric abstraction in favour of a more intuitive form of expression, similar toaction painting. Another name forTachism isAbstraction lyrique (related to AmericanLyrical Abstraction).COBRA is also related to Tachisme, as is Japan'sGutai group.
AfterWorld War II the termSchool of Paris often referred to Tachisme, theEuropean equivalent ofAmerican abstract expressionism. Important proponents wereJean-Paul Riopelle,Wols,Jean Dubuffet,Pierre Soulages,Nicolas de Staël,Hans Hartung,Gérard Schneider,Serge Poliakoff,Georges Mathieu andJean Messagier, among several others. (See list of artists below.)
According to Chilvers, the termtachisme "was first used in this sense in about 1951 (the French critics Charles Estienne and Pierre Guéguen have each been credited with coining it) and it was given wide currency by [French critic and painter]Michel Tapié in his bookUn Art autre (1952)."
Tachisme was a reaction toCubism and is characterized by spontaneous brushwork, drips and blobs of paint straight from the tube, and sometimes scribbling reminiscent ofcalligraphy.
Tachisme is closely related toInformalism or Art Informel, which, in its 1950s French art-critical context, referred not so much to a sense of "informal art" as "a lack or absence of form itself"–non-formal or un-form-ulated–and not a simple reduction of formality or formalness. Art Informel was more about the absence of premeditated structure, conception or approach (sans cérémonie) than a mere casual, loosened or relaxed art procedure.[3]
