Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), one of the most influential abstract expressionists, was famous for his large ‘drip’ canvases/ action painting. Born in Wyoming in 1912, he grew up to be rebellious and irascible but at the same time he was highly introverted. In 1928 he moved to Los Angeles, where he was educated at the Manual Arts High School and learned about European modernism. Pollock settled in New York in 1930 to study at the Art Students League with the American scene painter Thomas Hart Benton, whose principles of rhythmical composition influenced Pollock’s mature style. Inspired by Picasso’s cubist-surrealist paintings and Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious, Pollock began to develop a new pictorial form language from 1937 onwards. Chronic emotional problems led Pollock to seek psychoanalytic treatment in 1939. Prior to this, he had met the abstract expressionist painter Lee Krasner, whom he later married. Pollock, at his first solo exhibition in 1943 at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery, New York, impressed critics with the raw painterly quality of his canvases. Shortly afterwards, the Museum of Modern Art was the first museum to acquire one of his works. He moved to a farmhouse on Long Island in 1945, where he began executing his famous drip paintings (1947–1950). Pollock’s technique of pouring and dribbling paint with brushes and sticks onto large canvases created dynamic pictorial rhythms and energetic curvilinear designs. These paintings were widely purchased by collectors and museums nationwide. In 1950 Pollock’s drinking began to affect his art; after 1954, he painted only sporadically. He died in a car crash on Long Island in 1956.