Jackson Pollock | Original paintings & art for sale

Jackson Pollock was a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism, celebrated for his radical ‘drip’ technique and 'action painting' style, which emphasised spontaneity in the act of creation. His deeply personal quest to remove the barriers of traditional technique between inner experience and outward expression created some of the most important works of 20th century art, with Christie’s having offered several Pollock paintings for sale over recent years.

Born in Wyoming in 1912, by the late 1920s Pollock was in Los Angeles, studying at the Manual Arts High School, before he moved to New York to train at the Art Students League. As America slid into the Great Depression, the young Pollock managed to find employment as a mural assistant on Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Federal Art Project, and later studied under the great Mexican muralist, David Siqueiros. But in 1938, he was hospitalised for his alcoholism.

It proved to be a turning point. His time in Jungian analysis marked a shift away from the influence of the folk-inflected expressionism of the Mexican muralists in his work. His paintings began to lean towards abstraction, as in Male and Female (c.1942), and he became interested in surrealist ideas of automation and the unconscious.

By 1943 — having met his future wife and fellow painter Lee Krasner the year before — he had come to the attention of Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century Gallery in New York. His first great Abstract Expressionist works began to appear in 1947 with paintings such as Alchemy (1947) and Number 19, 1948 (1948) — the latter was sold by Christie’s New York for US$58.4 million in 2022. The artist once said, ‘It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or any other past culture.’

Over the next seven years, working with the canvas laid on the floor and dripping or pouring paint, or using sticks, trowels or paint thickened with sand or crushed glass, Pollock produced some of the greatest Abstract Expressionist works ever made. It was an extraordinary period that created paintings like Lavender Mist (1950), Autumn Rhythm (1950) and Blue Poles (1952) and ended with his death in an alcohol-related car accident in 1954 after a period of mounting depression.

During his lifetime, Pollock helped establish American modern art on a global stage, with his impact still felt today. The artist’s former studio at his home in East Hampton, New York, is now a National Historic Landmark, and his work features in international collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London and Centre Pompidou in Paris.

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