Jackson Pollock

Pollock, (Paul) Jackson

(1912–56) painter; born in Cody, Wyo. He grew up in Wyoming and California, moved to New York City, and studied intermittently with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League (c. 1929–32). His paintings of the 1930s, such as Birth (1937), anticipate the turbulent impasto and sexual imagery of his later work. His first major exhibition was organized by Peggy Guggenheim (1943) when he was using mythological themes, as seen in The She Wolf (1943). Around 1946 he settled in Easthampton, Long Island, and began his critically acclaimed abstract work exemplified by Full Fathom Five (1947). The spatter-and-drip technique used on his large canvases (1945–55) established his reputation as a major abstract expressionistic painter. He explored figurative studies, but shortly before his death in an automobile accident, he reclaimed his interest in action painting.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Pollock, Jackson

 

Born Jan. 28, 1912, in Cody, Wyo., died Aug. 12, 1956, in East Hampton, N.Y. American painter.

Pollock studied in Los Angeles from 1925 to 1929 at the Manual Arts High School and in New York from 1929 to 1931 at the Art Students League. His teacher in New York was T. H. Benton. After 1940 he turned to abstract art, becoming one of the leaders of its “Pacific school.” Pollock’s work is an extreme expression of irrationalism and of abstract expressionism’s principle of “spontaneous form creation.” To imitate random color-istic and linear effects, Pollock painted by dripping, that is, he applied his colors without a brush.

REFERENCE

Tomassoni, I. J. Pollock. [Florence, 1968].

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.