Gestural

Gestural is a term describing the application of paint in free, sweeping, energetic movements of the hand and the whole body, where the trace of the brush, its span, pressure, and speed themselves become the chief expressive content of the work. In gestural painting the act of painting is equated with an action or performance: the canvas records the physical presence of the artist, their emotion, and their movement through time. The concept found its most vivid expression in the Abstract Expressionism of the mid-twentieth century, particularly in so-called action painting, a term the critic Harold Rosenberg applied to the practice of Jackson Pollock, who splashed and poured paint onto canvas spread on the floor, and of Willem de Kooning with his turbulent strokes. Related searches were developed by European Tachisme and Lyrical Abstraction. Gesturalism stresses the immediacy, spontaneity, and bodily nature of the creative act, setting them against measured, geometric abstraction. Its influence is felt in contemporary painting and in calligraphic and performative practices.