Abstract Expressionism revisited by Erik Sulander; Place in the Milieu of Abstract Expressionism This work sits within the lineage of American Abstract Expressionism but diverges from its midcentury predecessors in subtle yet significant ways. Where Franz Kline imposed monumental gravitas and de Kooning wrestled with figure and ground, Sulander approaches abstraction as a field of psychic improvisation and cognitive mapping — more aligned with late-period Motherwell or even the lyrical abstractionists of the 1960s and ’70s. Yet unlike those softer modes, there is a raw, almost jazz-like immediacy here: one senses the artist thinking and reacting in real time, allowing gesture to record internal states without over-editing. This positions Sulander’s work at the contemporary edge of Abstract Expressionism’s ongoing evolution — a conversation that remains alive in current painting discourse around mark-making, automatism, and embodied gesture.