<P> The movement 's name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self - denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism , the Bauhaus , and Synthetic Cubism . Additionally , it has an image of being rebellious , anarchic , highly idiosyncratic and , some feel , nihilistic . In practice , the term is applied to any number of artists working ( mostly ) in New York who had quite different styles , and even to work that is neither especially abstract nor expressionist . California Abstract Expressionist Jay Meuser , who typically painted in the non-objective style , wrote about his painting Mare Nostrum , `` It is far better to capture the glorious spirit of the sea than to paint all of its tiny ripples . '' Pollock 's energetic `` action paintings '' , with their `` busy '' feel , are different , both technically and aesthetically , from the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning 's figurative paintings and the rectangles of color in Mark Rothko 's Color Field paintings ( which are not what would usually be called expressionist , and which Rothko denied were abstract ) . Yet all four artists are classified as abstract expressionists . </P>
artists of the new york school of abstract expressionism produced paintings that are abstract but
expressionist