Jackson (Paul) Pollock, was an American painter, who was a leader of the abstract expressionist movement. He was born in Cody, Wyoming, and studied at the Art Students League in New York City with Thomas Hart Benton. Pollock spent several years traveling around the country and sketching. In the late 1930s and early 1940s he worked in New York City on the Work Projects Administration Federal Art Project. His early paintings, in the naturalistic style of Benton, depict the American scene realistically. Between 1943 and 1947 Pollock, influenced by surrealism, adopted a freer and more abstract style.
After 1947 Pollock worked as an abstract expressionist, developing a technique that was called action-painting in which the artist drips paint and commercial enamels from sticks onto huge canvases that stretched on the floor. …
