(from French, tache : "spot") Style of painting practiced in Paris after World War II and through the 1950s.
Like its U.S. equivalent, action painting , it featured the intuitive, spontaneous gesture of the artist's brush stroke. The Tachists, including Hans Hartung and Georges Mathieu, produced large works of sweeping brush strokes and of drips, blots, stains, and splashes of colour. Tachism was part of the postwar movement known as Art Informel, inspired by U.S. Abstract Expressionism .