Happy Birthday to Jackson Pollock
"Every good painter paints what he is."—Jackson Pollock
Born on this day in 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, Pollock's work helped define America's artistic coming of age. In 1929, encouraged by his brother, he moved to New York to pursue painting at the Art Students League under Thomas Hart Benton, who was to remain a supporter throughout Pollock's life. During the thirties Pollock blended his Benton-derived brand of Regionalism with elements of Surrealism, evident in this painting which was produced to commemorate Pollock's journey in 1934 to visit his mother after his father's death.
Pollock revolutionized the concept of painting with his expressive, direct approach that came to be called "action painting." Both reviled and praised throughout the fifties for his boundary-breaking work, Pollock became the acknowledged leader of the new American movement called Abstract Expressionism. The artist was killed in an automobile accident in 1956.
Source: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).
Pictured: Jackson Pollock, 1912–1956, Going West, about 1934—35, oil on fiberboard, 15 1/8 x 20 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Thomas Hart Benton.
"Every good painter paints what he is."—Jackson Pollock
Born on this day in 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, Pollock's work helped define America's artistic coming of age. In 1929, encouraged by his brother, he moved to New York to pursue painting at the Art Students League under Thomas Hart Benton, who was to remain a supporter throughout Pollock's life. During the thirties Pollock blended his Benton-derived brand of Regionalism with elements of Surrealism, evident in this painting which was produced to commemorate Pollock's journey in 1934 to visit his mother after his father's death.