Action1.

The action painting evolved at a time of unrest and anxiety after the end of World War II and at the onset of the Cold War.

It was also a time when psychoanalysis began to flourish, changing people’s understanding of the world through self-consciousness.

Action painters were attracted by Carl Jung’s theory of the Collective Unconscious and were very much interested in the philosophy of Existentialism, especially Jean Paul Sartre’s human action decrptions as the foundation for identity.

The action painting reflected humankind in serious crisis, post-war feelings of anxiety and anguish, and the desire of expressing an authentic inner-self in a direct, unconstrained way.