Abstract expressionism – not just macho heroes with brushes

With its vast vibrant canvases, the Royal Academy’s latest exhibition – the first survey of abstract expressionism in Europe in more than 50 years – sheds fresh light on the movement’s originsWhen abstract expressionism first crossed the Atlantic in 1959, in The New American Painting, an exhibition that stopped in cities including Berlin, Paris and London (where it hung at the Tate Gallery), it blew the socks off European artists. Painters of the Ecole de Paris, the centr