1912 -1956 · New York, Springs and abstract expressionism

Pour lines, projected enamel and large centerless fields make Jackson Pollock a major figure in abstract expressionism and transform the painting into a trace of controlled action.

Paul Jackson Pollock was born in 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, and grew up in several cities in the American West. In 1930, he moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League with Thomas Hart Benton. Benton's curved rhythms, Mexican muralists, Picasso, surrealism and indigenous arts nourished a formation made of transformed borrowings. During the Great Depression, Pollock worked for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. His paintings from the 1930s and early 1940s combined figures, animals, myths and totemic forms. His paintings from the 1930s and early 1940s combined figures, animals, myths and totemic forms. His paintings from the 1930s and early 1940s combined figures, animals, myths and totemic forms. His paintings from the 1930s and early 1940s combined figures, animals, myths and totemic forms. During the Great Depression, Pollock worked for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. His paintings from the 1930s and early 1940s combined figures, animals, myths and totemic forms. His paintings from the 1930s and early 1940s combined figures Mural, a large composition which decisively broadens the scale of his gesture. In 1945, Pollock married the painter Lee Krasner and moved to Springs, on Long Island. In the barn converted into a workshop, from 1947 he developed the method that made him famous. The untensioned canvas is placed on the ground; fluid industrial paint, sticks, hardened brushes and containers allow the line to be poured, thrown and circulated. The gesture engages the whole body, but the superpositions, densities and pauses show careful control. The gesture engages the whole body, but the superpositions, densities and pauses show careful control. Alchemy marks this passage. Number 1, 1950 - Lavender mist envelops the gaze in a network without a single focal point. Number One, 1949 and large paintings say all-over make each edge an active limit. Pollock, however, does not definitively abandon the figure. Black paintings from the early 1950s reappear silhouettes and signs, while Convergence reintroduces intense color. Weakened by alcoholism, Pollock died in a car accident in 1956. His legacy lies as much in the works as in a new conception of the painting: surface, duration, gravity and movement become inseparable. His legacy is as much due to the works as to a new conception of the painting: surface, duration, gravity and movement become inseparable. The "Jackson Pollock" selection compares Mural fresco and Alchemy. His reading favors color.

In Pollock, the line no longer bypasses a shape: it records a trajectory, connects the edges and makes the entire surface a continuous event.