28.01.1912 – 11.08.1956

Paul Jackson Pollock was born January 28, 1912 in Wyoming in a large family – he was the youngest of five sons. The family often moved. The father of the future artist could not find a permanent job – he was a shepherd, a bricklayer, a gardener and so on, until he abandoned his family. Nomadic and almost impoverished childhood left its imprint on the character of Jackson, he grew up a depressed and hot-tempered child.
America in the early 20 th century was far from the leading innovative trends in the visual arts, the center of art life was Paris. However, the situation began to change in the 30s and 40s – fascism, Nazism and World War II forced artists, even well-known masters, to flee to the US. With them came to America major exhibitions of European art, which, along with other Americans, visited and Jackson Pollock. He moved to his brother in New York in 1930 and began to study with the artist Thomas Benton.
In the 1940s, New York became the center of modern artistic life. A huge impression on D. Pollock was produced by Guernica by Pablo Picasso, brought in as a retrospective of Picasso. Fourty years. 1900-1940. ” In the works of D. Polock in the period of 1940-1942, the influence of expressionism is noticeable. However, in 1943 Pollock abandoned figurative and completely immersed in a new trend in painting – abstract expressionism.
Jackson Pollock loved large formats, his works are monumental, and the drawing method is unique. Contemporaries nicknamed him Jack Sprayer, as Pollock abandoned the traditional ways of painting. He took a huge canvas and laid it out on the floor, and then, moving around it, splashed, hurled the paint with brushes and syringes.
The artist’s life ended tragically – he died on August 11, 1956 in a car crash.