New York Takes Over

Abstract Expressionism's impact reached far beyond the canvas:

• It proved American art could be as ambitious as European traditions
• Pollock's drips, Rothko's color fields, and de Kooning's gestural violence each became entire genres
• The CIA's covert promotion made it the first art movement used as Cold War propaganda
• Every later American movement — Pop, Minimalism, Conceptual art — defined itself against it

This was the moment American painting stopped imitating Europe and started speaking in its own voice.