Revenge (in-text plate, folio 8) from 21 Etchings and Poems

Harold Rosenberg was an American art critic and theorist whose writing shaped postwar artistic discourse. Best known for coining the term 'action painting' in 1952, he positioned abstract expressionism as a radical departure from European modernism, emphasizing the artist's gesture and existential commitment over finished form. His essays, collected in works like Art on the Edge, argued that painting was an event rather than an object. Rosenberg's criticism elevated process and spontaneity as the primary subjects of contemporary art, profoundly influencing how artists and institutions understood modernism's trajectory.