tachism

noun

1. (uncountable)A French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s.

   “This was particularly notable in early stages of impressionism—the 1866 Manet Affair for example—and later postimpressionism when tachism, pointillism, and cloisonism—as well as the term referring to the Italian impressionists, macchaioli—begin to create paintings where the surface overshadows the content (the sacrosanct subject of the work).”

   “This breakdown is virtually complete in Art Informel, in the turmoil of tachism, and in similar tendencies in modern painting. And, as in tachism, where composition is left to chance, it is no longer possible to decide, in parallel cases, what is involved: a redundancy-free, qualitatively highest level of order or the lowest level of order (chaos).”

   “By 1950, however, Tachism’s lyrical abstraction and the tragic pathos of l'art informel had taken precedence in Europe, prompting Bill to pursue the propagation of Concrete art overseas.”