OXFAM

"The She-Wolf" by Jackson Pollock (1943)

Master Artist Museum Print
Size: 11.7" x 16.5"
Status: Unframed

About the Artist

Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 - August 11, 1956) was an influential American painter and a major force in the abstract expressionist movement. His work was a great influence in 20th century art.

The youngest of five sons, Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, and grew up in Arizona and California, attending Los Angeles' Manual Arts High School where he studied with Frederick John Schwankovsky before being expelled for fighting and other disruptive behavior. He moved to New York City in 1930, following his brother, Charles Pollock, where they both studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Benton's influence on Pollock's formative work can be seen in his use of curvilinear undulating rhythms and in the use of rural American subject matter.

Pollock's early representational work was influenced by the Mexican Muralists Siqueiros, Orozco, and Diego Rivera, and even worked in Siqueiros's experimental workshop in 1936. After visiting exhibitions of Picasso and Surrealist Art, his work became increasingly symbolic. He traveled widely throughout the United States during the 1930's, but he settled in New York in 1934 where he worked on the "Works Progress Administration" Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1942. Pollock's first solo show was held at the Peggy Guggenheim The Art of This Century Gallery in New York in 1943.

Pollock had for several years been in psychotherapy to try to cope with depression and this gave him an interest in Carl Jung's theory of primitive archetypes that formed the basis of his work between 1938 and 1944. These works were often violent and were not well received at first.

In 1944 Pollock married his long-term lover Lee Krasner and in 1945, they moved to Springs, in East Hampton, on Long Island, New York. Their home in Springs was typical of the area, a shingle-style wood-frame house with a nearby barn that Pollock eventually made into a studio. Pollock's style changed dramatically in 1947. He began painting with his (often very large) canvases on the floor, and developed what was called his "drip" (or his preferred term, "pour") technique. He used his brushes as implements for dripping paint, and the brush never touched the canvas. Pollock's technique of pouring and dripping paint is thought to be one of the origins of the term Action Painting. In the process of making paintings in this way, he moved away from figurative representation, and challenged the Western tradition of using easel and brush, as well as moving away from use only of the hand and wrist - as he used his whole body to paint. In 1956 Time magazine dubbed Pollock "Jack the Dripper" as a result of his painting style.

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