Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock was an Abstract Expressionist painter and defining figure of postwar American art. His paintings rank among the most recognizable emblems of the 20th century, employing innovative techniques that continue to inspire cultural discourse today. In just under three decades, Pollock revolutionized the modes of art making for generations to come.

Best known for the drip painting technique he innovated in the late 1940s, Pollock’s work rerouted the trajectory of art history. Often covering the entirety of the canvas with house paint dripped and splattered from all angles, Pollock achieved international renown for his powerful abstractions that traced poured lines of paint, disregarding conventions of composition. In recent years, his early and late figurative works have received renewed critical attention, revealing a constant interplay between abstraction and figuration in his paintings. As Pollock once said, “I choose to veil the imagery.”

Pollock drew from his varied interests, ranging from Picasso and the European avant-garde to Mexican muralism, Indigenous symbolism, Jungian psychoanalysis, and jazz. He gravitated toward Surrealist automatism early in his career, a hallmark of his sketchbook drawings including those created while undergoing psychoanalysis. Echoing the formal developments of his canvas paintings, Pollock’s works on paper capture key innovations throughout his career.

Among the first Americans to be considered on the same tier as the European modern masters, Pollock paved the way for wider institutional recognition for his Abstract Expressionist contemporaries and his legacy stretches the globe. The work and writing of the next generation of artists, including Allan Kaprow, Donald Judd and the Gutai group in Japan, cemented his wider influence and placed him amid the most influential artists of the 20th century.