Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) was an American painter who developed a distinctive method of dripping and pouring paint onto canvases laid on the floor. His work became closely associated with Abstract Expressionism.

Drip painting: A painting technique in which paint is dripped, poured, or flung onto a surface. Pollock made this method his signature, working with canvases laid flat on the floor.
Thomas Hart Benton: An American painter associated with Regionalism who taught at the Art Students League in New York. Benton taught Pollock in the early 1930s and influenced his early figure-based compositions.
Lee Krasner: An American abstract painter whose work and career spanned several generations of modern art. Krasner was Pollock’s wife, an artist in her own right, and a major support for his work.
Abstract Expressionism: A postwar art movement centered on nonrepresentational painting and individual artistic expression. Pollock became one of the movement’s most recognizable artists and helped define its public image.
Mark Rothko: A Russian-born American painter known for large fields of soft-edged color. Rothko’s quiet color fields offer a contrast to Pollock’s dense, gestural networks.
Action painting: An approach to painting that emphasizes the physical act and gestures of making marks. Pollock’s energetic process became a defining example of painting as bodily action.
Art Students League of New York: An independent art school in Manhattan founded in 1875. Pollock studied there under Thomas Hart Benton after moving to New York.
Clement Greenberg: An American art critic who championed modernist painting and Abstract Expressionism. Greenberg’s criticism helped establish Pollock’s reputation as a major modern painter.
New York School: A loose group of mid-century New York artists, poets, and musicians associated with avant-garde practices. Pollock’s career helped shift the center of modern painting from Paris to New York.
Barnett Newman: An American painter known for large color-field canvases divided by vertical bands called zips. Newman pursued monumental simplicity where Pollock favored intricate, all-over activity.

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