Jackson Pollock

Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) revolutionized American art by abandoning brushes and easels to pour and drip house paint directly onto canvases laid on the floor. Born in Cody, Wyoming, he studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League in New York, absorbing the Regionalist's emphasis on rhythm and movement before rejecting representational subjects entirely. In 1947, Pollock developed his signature "drip technique," flinging paint from sticks and trowels in looping gestures that created dense, all-over compositions. His method, later called "action painting," used his whole body and let him work from all four sides of the canvas.

Between 1947 and 1950, Pollock created his most celebrated works: Full Fathom Five, Lavender Mist, Autumn Rhythm, and Number 1A, paintings that made New York the center of the avant-garde and established Abstract Expressionism as America's first internationally influential art movement. His wife, artist Lee Krasner, managed his career and later his legacy. The Museum of Modern Art held a memorial retrospective four months after his death in a drunk-driving accident at age 44. His painting Number 5, 1948 sold for approximately $140 million in 2006. Today, major works hang at MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Tate Modern. The explosive energy and abstract visual rhythms of his drip paintings continue to influence contemporary artists worldwide.