Jackson Pollock 1912-1956

Paul Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) was born in Cody, Wyoming, and grew up in Arizona and California. In 1928 he began studying painting at the Manual Arts High School, Los Angeles, before moving to New York in 1930. There he studied at the Art Students League with Thomas Hart Benton and was introduced to the murals of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. Between 1935 and 1942 he worked for the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project and explored experimental techniques at David Alfaro Siqueiros’s workshop.

In 1943 Peggy Guggenheim gave Pollock his first solo exhibition at Art of This Century, New York, and contracted him until 1947. By the mid-1940s Pollock had turned fully to abstraction. In 1947 he pioneered his “drip paintings,” applying enamel to unstretched canvas on the floor with sticks, knives, and poured gestures. These “action paintings” embodied his belief that painting could manifest energy and transform contemporary art.

In 1945 Pollock married artist Lee Krasner and moved to Springs, East Hampton, where he worked until his death in 1956. His paintings were exhibited internationally, including the Venice Biennale (1950), and posthumously in retrospectives at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1967, 1998).

Pollock’s work is represented in major public collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Tate, London, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.