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Jackson
Pollock 1912-1956
He began to study painting in 1929 at the Art
Students' League, New York, under the Regionalist
painter Thomas Hart Benton.
It was Jackson Pollock who blazed an astonishing
trail for other Abstract Expressionist painters
to follow. De Kooning said, "He broke the ice",
an enigmatic phrase suggesting that Pollock
showed what art could become with his 1947 drip
paintings.
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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