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David Smith,
Cubi VI(1963),
Israel Museum,
Jerusalem.
David Smith was one of the most influential American sculptors of the 20th century.
Technically,
an important predecessor is surrealism,
with its emphasis on spontaneous,
automatic,
or subconscious creation.
Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of André Masson,
Max Ernst,
and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of American Northwest artist Mark Tobey,
especially his "white writing" canvases,
which,
though generally not large in scale,
anticipate the "all-over" look of Pollock's drip paintings.
In the United States,
Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky.[2]