<P> Abstract expressionism is a post -- World War II art movement in American painting , developed in New York in the 1940s . It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world , a role formerly filled by Paris . Although the term abstract expressionism was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates , it had been first used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm , regarding German Expressionism . In the United States , Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky . </P>
when did the center of the western art world shift from europe to the u.s
in the 1940s