Biography

Jackson Pollock changed painting by making the movement of liquid paint an organising force across the canvas. Born Paul Jackson Pollock in Cody, Wyoming, on 28 January 1912, he worked chiefly in New York City and, from 1945, in Springs on Long Island. His famous poured paintings developed through years of study, government employment and engagement with Mexican muralism and European modernism. His paintings travelled internationally; he never went to Europe. ^[1]

That longer education matters. Pollock studied with Thomas Hart Benton, absorbed several kinds of modern painting and first exhibited alone in 1943, before his celebrated poured work. The familiar image of a painter above a floor-bound canvas belongs within a career sustained by teachers, fellow artists and patrons. It should leave room for the changing paintings as well as the public personality. ^[2]

A childhood of moves

Pollock was the youngest of five sons of Stella May McClure and LeRoy, usually called Roy, Pollock. His brothers were Charles, Marvin Jay, Frank and Sanford, known as Sande. Roy had been born LeRoy McCoy and adopted by a Pollock family: Jackson inherited the surname under which his father had grown up. In November 1912 they moved to National City, California. They continued to a farm near Phoenix in 1913, an orchard near Chico in 1917, then Janesville and Orland. They separated in 1920; Roy maintained contact and support. They reunited in Phoenix in 1923; Stella and her younger sons moved to Riverside in 1924. ^{[5] [6] [7]}

Charles, ten years older, supplied an early route into modern art. In Los Angeles he attended the Otis Art Institute and worked at the Los Angeles Times. From 1922 he sent Jackson and Sande copies of The Dial, with art reproductions alongside its literary contents. Printed images and his brother’s curiosity preceded Jackson’s New York training. Western landscape also entered Pollock’s early paintings. Varnedoe later connected the expanses of the West with the Atlantic horizon available to Pollock in Springs. ^{[5] [8] [9]}

In Los Angeles from 1928, Pollock attended Manual Arts High School, where Frederick John de St. Vrain Schwankovsky introduced abstraction and mystical writings. Expulsions and readmission preceded part-time attendance; he also read about Diego Rivera. In June 1930 he and Charles saw José Clemente Orozco’s recently completed Prometheus at Pomona College. A major example of contemporary mural painting was before him shortly before he moved east. ^{[10] [7] [11] [12]}

New York and Thomas Hart Benton

In 1930 Jackson followed Charles and Frank to New York. Pollock entered Benton’s Art Students League class on 29 September 1930 and became mural-class monitor in 1932. He studied life drawing with John Sloan, clay modeling with Robert Laurent, and stone carving. He took free sculpture classes at Greenwich House. In 1933 Pollock watched Rivera painting at Rockefeller Center. His father died in 1933. Charles had already studied with Benton, helping connect Jackson to the teacher. ^{[5] [11] [7] [10]}

Benton’s instruction included the analysis of Old Master compositions and mural painting. At the New School, Benton’s America Today and Orozco’s frescoes offered ambitious examples in the same building. Pollock’s later freedom developed after sustained study of how bodies and movement could be organised across a picture. Benton gave private guidance. The Met’s sketchbook research identifies study of El Greco, Michelangelo, Rubens and Tintoretto, largely through reproductions. The classroom belonged to a wider education in images. His 1944 questionnaire credited Benton’s Renaissance teaching and productive opposition. He later told Berton Roueché that Benton had introduced him to Renaissance art and driven his realism so forcefully that Pollock reacted towards abstraction. ^{[14] [7] [15] [16] [17]}

Pollock visited the Bentons on Martha’s Vineyard. Jackson and Sande, helped by Benton and Charles, cleaned the City and Country School, where Caroline Pratt and Helen Marot encouraged him. Rita Benton helped sell his decorated vessels. She helped find a ceramics workshop. Sculpture remained a recurring interest within this life of painting and practical work. ^{[8] [11] [6] [18]}

The Depression, the WPA and experimental painting

Government work brought some security. After years of poverty and dependence on his brothers, Pollock joined the WPA’s Federal Art Project in August 1935, working first in murals and later in the easel division. The wages supported experiment and continued work until 1943. In 1935 he restored public monuments as a stonecutter. Dismissal in June 1938 and summer hospital treatment preceded November reassignment to the easel project. ^{[19] [11] [7]}

Siqueiros’s Experimental Workshop in New York provided another education in 1936. It was called Laboratory of Modern Techniques in Art. Pollock joined collective work for political events and encountered enamel paint, airbrushing, pouring and dripping. The experience loosened the usual relationship between brush and surface; it did not immediately produce the mature paintings of a decade later. Jackson and Sande helped prepare banners, posters and a float for May Day. ^{[12] [7] [14]}

Orozco’s contribution was different. Pollock travelled to Dartmouth in 1936 to study The Epic of American Civilization. Sarah G. Powers’s account connects that encounter with his subsequent attention to myth, ritual and imagery of creation and destruction. These were sustained artistic interests rather than a single technical lesson. In 1940 he watched Orozco painting Dive Bomber and Tank at MoMA. The Mexican encounters continued beyond the first impact of mural painting. Psychological treatment also entered his life: from 1939 Joseph Henderson used drawings in their sessions, and Violet Staub de Laszlo later continued the work. Those circumstances do not provide a diagnosis from which every painted image can be decoded. ^{[20] [21] [10]}

Picasso, Surrealism and Indigenous art

In 1939 Pollock repeatedly visited Picasso’s Guernica and its preparatory works at the Valentine Gallery. The major MoMA Picasso retrospective followed that winter. New York offered both a mural-scale painting and examples of the drawings behind it. War then brought European Surrealists to the city; Pollock joined Matta’s circle and its experiments with automatism. Robert Motherwell helped form that short-lived group in 1942. ^{[10] [8]}

At MoMA’s Indian Art of the United States exhibition in 1941, Pollock watched Navajo artists make sand paintings on the gallery floor. Pollock compared floor-working with Western sand painters; his 1944 questionnaire denied deliberate Indigenous references, describing memories and enthusiasms. The Diné practice has its own ceremonial purposes and sacred songs, as the Navajo Tourism Department explains. Pollock’s analogy, following a museum encounter, does not make his paintings examples of that practice. ^{[10] [16] [22]}

Figures, signs and mythic subjects remained active during the early 1940s and could return later. Stephanie Buhmann stresses this movement between abstract and referential work. A simple progression into permanent abstraction gives the career a tidiness that Pollock’s repeated experiments resist. Images might be exposed or covered during painting; later figuration could revisit earlier concerns. ^[8]

Meeting Lee Krasner

Krasner entered Pollock’s life as an experienced working artist. Trained with Hans Hofmann and active among New York abstractionists, she prided herself on knowing the small avant-garde community. When both were invited to John Graham’s McMillen exhibition, she sought out the unfamiliar Pollock and was astonished by his paintings. McMillen’s dates were 20 January–6 February 1942. Her recollections differ: late 1941 in du Plessix and Gray, the 1942 show in Glaser; both followed an earlier forgotten dance encounter. ^{[23] [11] [16]}

Her professional leadership was concrete. In 1942 Krasner supervised department-store window displays advertising wartime training courses and secured Pollock a place on her team. She was a project leader as well as an advocate. Krasner hired him for navy recruiting posters (1942). Krasner introduced him to Hofmann, Herbert and Mercedes Matter, then in August 1942 moved into East 8th Street after Sande’s family left. ^{[24] [6] [7]}

The programme closed in late 1942. WPA employment ended administratively in January 1943. After commercial decorating, he became custodian at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in May. A subsistence wage had made years of artistic experiment possible; its disappearance made patronage newly urgent. ^{[6] [11] [19]}

Peggy Guggenheim and the breakthrough of 1943

Peggy Guggenheim had opened Art of This Century in October 1942, combining European modernism with opportunities for young Americans. Her contract with Pollock in July 1943 and simultaneous mural commission changed his prospects. Through Herbert Matter, James Johnson Sweeney had introduced his work to Guggenheim. He had appeared in the gallery’s collage show and Spring Salon. The contract advanced $150 monthly, enabling full-time painting. His first solo exhibition opened there that November. Guggenheim’s gallery director, Howard Putzel, and Matta recommended the solo show. ^{[25] [7] [26] [1] [2] [6]}

Stenographic Figure, dated around 1942 by MoMA, was a key Salon painting. Its bright, open space, scratchy calligraphy and alternative possible readings of its figures show why the breakthrough cannot be reduced to the arrival of drips. Mondrian’s enthusiastic response encouraged Guggenheim; the famous words are preserved as recollected testimony. ^{[27] [28]}

November’s fifteen oils included Male and Female and The Moon Woman; works on paper accompanied them. The She-Wolf, Guardians of the Secret and Stenographic Figure also appeared. Sweeney’s introduction made a case for a painter willing to risk a picture’s failure in pursuit of an individual statement. ^{[6] [28]}

Mural and the first museum purchase

Guggenheim’s commission became Mural, for her East 61st Street entrance hall. Duchamp recommended canvas so that the painting could move with her. Pollock removed a partition in his apartment to accommodate it. The opportunity joined his early mural ambitions to a new freedom over what and how to paint. ^{[29] [25]}

The familiar account of Mural’s completion in a single night compresses a more complicated process. Getty researchers found an early fluid composition applied wet into wet, followed by numerous layers over dried paint. A rapid beginning remains possible, but completion required further applications and drying intervals. Most paint was applied with the stretched canvas upright; apparently poured effects could also be produced in that position. The work demonstrates sustained invention and revision, largely with artists’ oils but including a late use of white house paint to reopen areas of space. ^{[30] [31]}

Institutional recognition followed. MoMA acquired The She-Wolf in 1944, becoming the first museum to buy a Pollock. The animal may allude to the wolf that nursed Romulus and Remus, but the museum preserves that reading as a possibility. Pollock resisted explaining its subject. Recognition did not depend on settling a single meaning. The purchase date was 2 May. The price was $650. ^{[28] [32] [26] [7]}

In 1944–45 Pollock made engraving experiments at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17. Printmaking offered another working rhythm. His 1930s lithographs reflected Benton; subsequent engraving and screenprinting extended the experiments. MoMA’s print exhibition described a methodical practice, often in small works on paper, alongside his painting. In 1945 he exhibited alone at the Arts Club of Chicago and in San Francisco, as well as again at Art of This Century. Greenberg’s reviews in The Nation helped build a critical constituency. ^{[19] [33] [34] [26]}

Marriage and a working home in Springs

Krasner and Pollock married on 25 October 1945 and moved to the farmhouse on Fireplace Road on 5 November. Guggenheim lent the $2,000 down payment towards a $5,000 property with a $3,000 mortgage; the deed transferred in April 1946. The house initially lacked indoor plumbing and central heating. The move followed a summer visit to East Hampton. Krasner first proposed trying country life; Pollock then embraced buying a house. They initially had no car, getting around on bicycles or on foot. Krasner negotiated a loan against future work. ^{[35] [36] [9]}

Pollock initially painted in an upstairs bedroom, making The Key with the canvas on the floor. In June 1946 the barn was moved to open the view towards Accabonac Creek and became his studio. Krasner, who had first used the back parlor, took the vacated bedroom. Separate workplaces supported their artistic relationship and two continuing practices. Studio visits required invitation; Krasner recalled his question, “Does it work?” ^{[35] [36] [16]}

The 1946 groups were Accabonac Creek and Sounds in the Grass. The move did not instantly produce the familiar poured style. Thick paint squeezed from tubes and changing relations between figures and surroundings remained active. Later research confirmed alkyd binder in orange in Eyes in the Heat (1946). The published study describes binder in some black and yellow paint in Untitled (1946) as only possibly alkyd. Materials were changing before the usual breakthrough date of 1947. ^{[9] [37] [38]}

The poured paintings, 1947–48

During 1947 Pollock developed the sustained pouring and dripping for which he became famous. The new paintings gained praise and scorn. A different position for the canvas and the use of liquid paint opened possibilities, but making a painting still involved judgment. Sticks, trowels and knives, as well as paint poured from the can, extended the painter’s tools. My Painting (Possibilities, winter 1947–48) describes hard support, four-sided movement, impasto and added materials: “On the floor I am more at ease.” ^{[14] [1] [16]}

The technique changed the making of a line. Paint travelled through the air, its consistency and the artist’s movement shaping its course. In his 1998 interview with Terry Gross, Kirk Varnedoe stressed the control and adjustment within this practice: later layers could answer or cover earlier ones, and gestures had to be reinvented at different scales. Spontaneity did not remove choices about density, colour or revision. To Glaser, Krasner rejected unthinking outpouring, stressing awareness, intellect and accumulated experience; WPA wages sustained abstraction despite little demand. ^{[9] [16]}

Alchemy and Lucifer were among the 1947 paintings shown at Parsons in January 1948. Full Fathom Five and Enchanted Forest appeared alongside Reflection of the Big Dipper. Art of This Century closed May 1947. Guggenheim’s departure for Europe in 1947 brought the change to Betty Parsons. Tony Smith helped install that first Parsons exhibition. Friends and dealers provided an exhibition platform as well as encouragement. Guggenheim’s collection carried paintings to the 1948 Venice Biennale and later Italian venues. ^{[18] [26] [11] [6] [7]}

Sweeney helped secure the 1948 Eben Demarest Trust grant. Stella’s 1949 letter described happiness, gardening and sobriety. Pollock’s treatment with Edwin Heller accompanied a period without alcohol in 1948–50. Domestic stability belongs in the history, without becoming a formula for the value of a painting. ^{[6] [14]}

Life magazine and the problem of fame

On 8 August 1949 Life asked, “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” A question about rank helped bring him a mass audience; it was neither a prize nor an agreed judgment. Fame made the painter’s identity as conspicuous as his work. Krasner recalled unusually extensive Life coverage. ^{[14] [39] [16]}

Later acclaim can disguise the uncertainty of those years. François-Marc Gagnon’s study distinguishes Greenberg’s reviews during Pollock’s lifetime from criticism written after his reputation was established. Praise was neither unanimous nor an unchanging judgment of every painting. ^[26]

Numerical titles offered a different emphasis. Krasner told Roueché they directed attention towards painting itself. His 1950 visit also recorded differing domestic rhythms: she rose earlier, while Pollock described overcoming his old habit of working through the night. The 1998 chronology credits Parsons with the A suffix. MoMA’s label instead credits Pollock. Number 1, 1948 remained unsold when exhibited early in 1949, then reappeared later that year as Number 1A to distinguish it from newer work. The suffix records exhibition history, not a preliminary version. ^{[17] [6] [40]}

Other media remained important. In 1949 Pollock made terra-cotta sculptures in his neighbour Roseanne Larkin’s studio. MoMA’s travelling Sculpture by Painters included one of these sculptures and Drawing Number 4, 1948. Modeling clay continued alongside reinventing the painted line. Peter Blake’s model for an ideal museum, shown at Parsons in 1949, included small Pollock sculptures. It helped lead to a mural commission for the Geller house, installed in 1950: painting could become part of a building. ^{[18] [41]}

The large canvases and the camera, 1950

The large canvases of 1950 included One: Number 31 and Number 32. One, Autumn Rhythm: Number 30 and Lavender Mist appeared among thirty-two works at Parsons that November–December. The ambition did not ensure sales: Gail Levin records Lavender Mist as the only sale from the show, to Ossorio. Critical prominence, income and the fate of a particular painting could follow different paths. ^{[19] [42]}

Pollock also discussed a Catholic church on Long Island with Tony Smith and Ossorio, with paintings integral to its architecture. The project continued into the early 1950s but never advanced beyond designs and a model. In 1950 his paintings reached the United States pavilion at Venice and a solo exhibition drawn from Guggenheim’s collection at the Museo Correr, followed by a Milan exhibition whose selection O’Connor could not establish. These were journeys made by paintings; Pollock remained in the United States. ^{[18] [7] [34] [11] [1]}

Reception could change in transmission. Bruno Alfieri’s account combined the language of disorder with praise of Pollock’s place in the avant-garde. Time selected adverse passages, losing that balance. Pollock protested the omitted praise and corrected Time’s claim that he had visited Italy. ^{[21] [11]}

Hans Namuth photographed Pollock at work in 1950 and, with Paul Falkenberg, made films. For the glass painting Number 29, Namuth filmed from beneath the support. The unusual arrangement made the working process visible while necessarily framing it. The camera recorded an experiment with particular materials and conditions, not a universal rule for every Pollock. ^[35]

Later study of One extended that account. MoMA conservators James Coddington and Jennifer Hickey identified late brown drips whose form strongly suggested adjustments with the canvas hanging vertically. The painting appears to have moved between orientations: the floor supplied a working position, while close attention to small passages continued on the wall. Wright’s interview (1950–51; recording and broadcast dates disputed) distinguished controlled flow and general intention from fixed imagery: “Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.” ^{[43] [16]}

Heller died in 1950, and Pollock resumed drinking later that year. His success and difficulties coexisted. An angry dinner reportedly followed filming; it cannot establish the cause of later artistic changes. ^{[42] [6]}

Drawing in black, 1951

Writing Ossorio on 7 June 1951, Pollock described drawing black on canvas, returning early imagery and anticipated resistance from non-objective painting’s supporters. Echo: Number 25, 1951 exemplifies the change. MoMA contrasts its economical line and suggested figuration with One’s extensive, multidirectional activity. Space around a mark and the recognition of a body or face acquired renewed force. ^{[6] [13]}

Examining Echo, Coddington and Hickey found fine lines within broader black marks on the reverse. They interpreted these as traces of a turkey baster touching the canvas while releasing pulses of paint. Direct contact appears to have helped shape this work’s line, adding a practical meaning to drawing on canvas. In 1969 Krasner connected the imagery with 1930s drawings, rejecting paint shortage as the reason for black and white. ^{[43] [16]}

The black paintings appeared at Parsons in November–December 1951, his fifth show there, with watercolours and drawings; Ossorio wrote the introduction. Krasner’s first solo exhibition at the same gallery ran from 15 October to 13 November, immediately preceding Pollock’s. Her independent work belonged within their shared professional setting. That year also brought the film’s June MoMA premiere, the 9th Street exhibition and Pollock’s appearance in Life’s Irascibles group photograph. ^{[42] [7] [11] [44] [6]}

New representation and new directions, 1952–53

Frustration over sales led Pollock from Parsons to Sidney Janis in 1952. Ossorio helped arrange the Paris exhibition with Michel Tapié. Greenberg organised Pollock’s first retrospective, at Bennington, with eight paintings that November, already inviting assessment of a developing career. It ranged from Pasiphaë to Echo. Dorothy C. Miller’s 15 Americans at MoMA also included him in 1952. ^{[42] [11] [21] [34]}

Janis’s first Pollock show in November 1952 included Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952, whose strong uprights were added late and followed by further lines of paint. Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax relates their structuring role to lessons associated with Benton. The teacher’s example could be transformed while an interest in organising movement endured. Convergence appeared in the same show. Convergence: Number 10, 1952 began in black and white before Pollock added colour, according to Buffalo AKG. Revision remained productive; the early 1950s cannot be reduced to a final retreat into black. ^{[7] [45] [46]}

The February 1954 Janis show gathered varied work from 1953: Portrait and a Dream, Easter and the Totem, Ocean Greyness, The Deep and Unformed Figure. MoMA describes Easter and the Totem’s renewed brushwork, quasi-figures and bright palette, suggesting Matisse. Olivier Michelon’s account of The Deep instead describes a pale painted mass opening onto dark ground through a central fissure. These alternatives deserve attention as distinct artistic decisions. ^{[11] [47] [48]}

The final working years

Pollock’s output diminished during his last years. White Light (1954) still shows invention: paint squeezed from tubes and wet passages manipulated with a brush to produce marbling. Its medium combines oil, enamel and aluminium paint. This method reconnects with earlier thick paint and complicates the familiar image of a hand permanently held above the canvas. Search and Scent followed (1955). ^{[34] [49] [11]}

Meanwhile Krasner’s large collages appeared at the Stable Gallery in September 1955. Her development continued as sustained painting became harder for Pollock. Janis’s 15 Years of Jackson Pollock that November–December brought early work together with The Key, poured paintings, Echo, Convergence, White Light and Search. Leo Steinberg found the paintings overwhelming despite their polarised reputation. ^{[24] [6] [11]}

MoMA was already discussing an exhibition with Pollock before he died. He was to inaugurate MoMA’s series on artists in mid-career. At home the relationship was under severe strain. Krasner left for Europe in July 1956; Pollock remained in Springs and became involved with Ruth Kligman. Kligman stayed with him briefly during Krasner’s absence. On 11 August he crashed into a tree on Fireplace Road, aged forty-four. He was driving drunk. Pollock and Edith Metzger died; Kligman survived. Krasner returned for his funeral. The crash ended two lives and left a survivor; the circumstances do not establish an intention to die. ^{[34] [6] [14] [7] [35]}

A reputation still being reconsidered

The planned exhibition became a memorial retrospective. Opening on 19 December 1956 and continuing until 3 February 1957, it contained thirty-five paintings and nine watercolours and drawings. Work intended for assessment during a living career was now encountered after the artist’s production had ended. ^[50]

Krasner continued painting for almost three decades. Her independent career gained wider recognition, including a Whitechapel retrospective in 1965. Her gifts also helped place Pollock’s work in public collections: Easter and the Totem is recorded as her gift in his memory. Her contributions to his legacy and the continuing development of her own art belong alongside one another. ^{[23] [47] [51]}

Varnedoe’s 1998 discussion of the artist’s image helps resist a biography organised around inevitable tragedy. Publicity and the familiar rebel persona affected how Pollock was received; they do not remove the need to look at his paintings. The Met’s 2026 Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous follows the two careers in parallel. The home in Springs becomes a place of two practices, while patronage, friendship, statements and material evidence enlarge the story around the famous photographs. ^{[9] [51]}