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Jackson
Pollock 1912-1956 He began to study painting in 1929 at
the Art Students' League, New York, under the Regionalist
painter Thomas Hart Benton. It was Jackson Pollock who
blazed an astonishing trail for other Abstract Expressionist
painters to follow. De Kooning said, "He broke the ice",
an enigmatic phrase suggesting that Pollock showed what
art could become with his 1947 drip paintings.
By the 1960s, however, he was generally recognized as
the most important figure in the most important movement
of this century in American painting, but a movement from
which artists were already in reaction (Post-Painterly
Abstraction). His unhappy personal life (he was an alcoholic)
and his premature death in a car crash contributed to
his legendary status. In 1944 Pollock married Lee Krasner
(1911-84), who was an Abstract Expressionist painter of
some distinction, although it was only after her husband's
death that she received serious critical recognition.
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