(Paul)
Jackson Pollack (1912-1956)
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Pollock, (Paul) Jackson (1912-1956),
American painter, who was a leader of the abstract
expressionist movement. He was born in Cody, Wyoming, and
studied at the Art Students League in New York City with
Thomas Hart Benton. Pollock spent several years traveling
around the country and sketching. In the late 1930s and
early 1940s he worked in New York City on the Work
Projects Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project. His
early paintings, in the naturalistic style of Benton,
depict the American scene realistically. Between 1943 and
1947 Pollock, influenced by surrealism, adopted a freer
and more abstract style, as in The She-Wolf (1943, Museum
of Modern Art, New York City).
After 1947 Pollock
worked as an abstract expressionist, developing the
action-painting technique in which the artist drips paint
and commercial enamels from sticks or trowels onto huge
canvases stretched on the floor. By this method Pollock
produced intricate interlaced patterns of color, such as
Full Fathom Five and Lucifer (both 1947, Museum of Modern
Art). After 1950 his style changed again, as he
crisscrossed raw white canvas with thin lines of brown
and black pigment. Among his paintings of this last
period is Ocean Grayness (1953, Guggenheim Museum, New
York City). See Abstract Expressionism.
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