Art movement, chiefly of painters, that dominated the European and American art market in the early to mid-1980s.
It was controversial both in the quality of its production and in the highly commercialized aspects of its presentation. Its practitioners, including Julian Schnabel and Anselm Kiefer , reacted to the highly intellectualized abstract art of the 1970s by creating dramatic, gestural paintings that incorporated some figurative elements and recognizable symbols. Their art was characterized by a tense yet playful presentation of objects in a "primitivist" manner, vivid colour harmonies, large scale, and a sense of inner tension and alienation. See also Expressionism .