Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming (1912-1956)

Jackson Pollock began to study painting in 1929 at the Art Students’ League, New York, under the Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. During the 1930s he worked in the manner of the Regionalists, being influenced also by the Mexican muralist painters (Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros) and by certain aspects of Surrealism.

From 1938 to 1942 he worked for the Federal Art Project. By the mid 1940s he was painting in a completely abstract manner, and the `drip and splash’ style for which he is best known emerged with some abruptness in 1947. Instead of using the traditional easel he affixed his canvas to the floor or the wall and poured and dripped his paint from a can; instead of using brushes he manipulated it with `sticks, trowels or knives’ (to use his own words), sometimes obtaining a heavy impasto by an admixture of `sand, broken glass or other foreign matter’. This manner of Action painting had in common with Surrealist theories of automatism that it was supposed by artists and critics alike to result in a direct expression or revelation of the unconscious moods of the artist.

Pollock’s name is also associated with the introduction of the All-over style of painting which avoids any points of emphasis or identifiable parts within the whole canvas and therefore abandons the traditional idea of composition in terms of relations among parts. The design of his painting had no relation to the shape or size of the canvas — indeed in the finished work the canvas was sometimes docked or trimmed to suit the image. All these characteristics were important for the new American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

During the 1950s Pollock continued to produce figurative or quasi-figurative black and white works and delicately modulated paintings in rich impasto as well as the paintings in the new all-over style. He was strongly supported by advanced critics, but was also subject to much abuse and sarcasm as the leader of a still little comprehended style; in 1956 Time magazine called him `Jack the Dripper’.

By the 1960s, however, he was generally recognized as the most important figure in the most important movement of this century in American painting, but a movement from which artists were already in reaction (Post-Painterly Abstraction). His unhappy personal life (he was an alcoholic) and his premature death in a car crash contributed to his legendary status. In 1944 Pollock married Lee Krasner (1911-84), who was an Abstract Expressionist painter of some distinction, although it was only after her husband’s death that she received serious critical recognition.

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Abstract expressionism was an American post-World War II art movement, being the first American movement to achieve worldwide influence and also the one that put New York City at the center of the art world, a role formerly filled by Paris. After WWII, with images of the Holocaust everywhere, it seemed redundant for socially-aware artists to paint these same images … a photograph at the time was much more powerful. Artists began to explore color and shape and to paint an entire canvas orange or blue. These works were produced in an extremely specific geographical setting and revealed a specific attitude. It was the result of the rivalry and dialogue between young American artists and the large community of European artists living in exile in New York. Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, and highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, rather nihilistic. It is seen as combining the emotional intensity and self-expression of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. The movement describe formal trend in American abstraction at the time. It can be broadly divided into two groups: Action Painting and Color Field and Hard-Edge Painting. It has its non-American parallels with similar aims (Art Informel, Cobra, Lyrical Abstraction). By the 1960s, the movement had lost most of its impact, and was no longer so influential. Movements which were direct responses to, and rebellions against, abstract expressionism had begun, such as pop art and minimalism. However, many painters who had produced abstract expressionist work continued to work in that style for many years afterwards. Action Painting(late 1940’s – late 1950’s) One of the significant streams of Abstract Expressionism is the Action Painting. The term “Action Painting” was used for the first time in 1952 to describe the works of painters such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. The life energy and the psyche of the painter were at once the driving force, the resource and the meaning of these works. The canvas was seen as an arena. Painting became an irrational, instinctive and impulsive moment of existence. The Action Painting work thus turned into the form and trace of the living body, conveying split-second action and motion.