In 1956 a small group of American Abstract Expressionist paintings were shown at the Tate Gallery. For many British artists this first-hand experience of the New York School was less a revelation and more of a confirmation of the gestural, existential abstraction they had already been working on. This had its roots in the French tachistes such as Soulages and De Stael, in which the brushmark – the tache – didn’t have to ‘describe’ anything, but could stand in its own right as something meaningful and expressive. What the Americans did teach the British, though, was a new ambition for abstraction – as a universal, archetypal language – and the potential of physical scale as a means to achieve this. Key British artists involved in these developments include William Gear, Roger Hilton and Peter Lanyon.