“1942-45: The havoc unleashed in the Second World War overshadows all intellectual and artistic production. The Surrealists who sought asylum in New York have a major impact on Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Robert Mothewell and Robert Matta. The bombing of Europe and the Pacific nations, the Holocaust, the nuclear destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima—in short the virtual devastation of the centers of the civilized world—set off an angst that permeates the global intellgentsia and informs the rise of philosophical Existentialism. Writers and artists in all media question human existence while seeking to purge humanity of the notions of essence that spur great nations and civilizations to adopt the conceit of their superiority over less powerful societies. In visual art, this philosphy informs Abstract Expressionism in its rejection of the aesthetics of the great masterpieces of art for having failed to tame the barbarism of civilization. By taking art back to its origins of making primordial and direct marks on a surface—the kind of art which the most primitive of humans made to record their existence—artists now sought to purge civilization of its warrior impulse.”

— Diego Rivera at MoMA Makes Us Ask, What Happened to the Radical Left in Art? - The Huffington Post