tachism
tachism noun: a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s.
Noun
tachism (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...1992, Philippe Hamon, translated by Katia Sainson-Frank and Lisa Maguire, Expositions: Literature and Architecture in Nineteenth-century France, University of California Press, page 146
- 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...1992, Rupert Riedl, “Schrödinger’s Negentropy Concept and Biology”, in Johann Götschl, editor, Erwin Schrödinger’s World View: The Dynamics of Knowledge and Reality, Springer, page 63
Examples of tachism in a sentence
- This breakdown is virtually complete in Art Informel, in the turmoil of tachism, and in similar tendencies in modern painting.1992, Rupert Riedl, “Schrödinger’s Negentropy Concept and Biology”, in Johann Götschl, editor, Erwin Schrödinger’s World View: The Dynamics...
- 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.2017, Alexander Alberro, Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth-Century Latin American Art, University of...
Forms of tachism
| alternative form | tachisme |
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Origin of tachism
From French tachisme, from tache (“stain”).
Questions about tachism
- What does tachism mean?
- Tachism means a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s.
- How do you use tachism in a sentence?
- This breakdown is virtually complete in Art Informel, in the turmoil of tachism, and in similar tendencies in modern painting.
- What part of speech is tachism?
- Tachism is a noun.
Words near tachism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tachism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “tachism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tachism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.