Tachisme (alternative spelling:
Tachism, derived from the French word
tache, stain) is a
French style of
abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The term is said to have been first used with regards to the movement in 1951. It is often considered to be the European equivalent to
abstract expressionism, although there are stylistic differences (American abstract expressionism tended to be more "aggressively raw" than tachisme). It was part of a larger postwar movement known as
Art Informel (or
Informel), which abandoned geometric abstraction in favour of a more intuitive form of expression, similar to
action painting. Another name for
Tachism is
Abstraction lyrique (related to American
Lyrical Abstraction).
COBRA is also related to Tachisme, as is Japan's
Gutai group.