Tachisme

also: Tachism · Abstraction lyrique

movement 1940s-1950s France Europe

Tachisme (from the French tache, a stain or blot) is the French strain of abstract painting that flourished in the 1940s and 1950s, and it is usually read as Europe's answer to Abstract Expressionism. Where interwar abstraction had turned to geometry, tachisme threw out the plan: paint was dabbed, dripped, and squeezed straight from the tube in spontaneous bursts, sometimes trailing into calligraphic scribbles. The name was applied around 1951 and given wide currency by the critic Michel Tapié in his 1952 book Un Art autre, which championed the new "art informel" - art without premeditated form. Tachisme belongs to that larger postwar current alongside COBRA and Japan's Gutai group: a deliberate turn from structure toward gesture, matter, and the unrepeatable moment of the hand.

The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)
The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)Public domain (credit: Johann Zoffany) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Spontaneous brushwork with no preliminary drawing or compositional plan
  • Blots and stains (taches) of paint, often applied straight from the tube
  • Drips and spatters that record the speed and gesture of the hand
  • Calligraphic scribbles and linear gestures across the surface
  • Crusted, worked surfaces where thick paint matter is itself the subject
  • Loose, intuitive composition that rejects geometric structure

Key figures

  • Jean Fautrier (1898-1964) — Thick 'haute pâte' surfaces whose 1943-1945 Hostages series prefigured Art Informel
  • Hans Hartung (1904-1989) — German-born painter of rapid, calligraphic line gestures
  • Georges Mathieu (1921-2012) — Speed-painted calligraphic canvases; the movement's most visible champion
  • Wols (1913-1951) — Small, nervous improvisations that anchored early Art Informel
  • Pierre Soulages (1919-2022) — Broad black strokes and scraped strata of light and dark

Example works

Sources

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