Paul Jackson Pollock was born in 1912 in Cody, Wyoming. He was the youngest of five brothers. His father was a surveyor who abandoned the Pollock family when Jackson Pollock was 9. Over the course of his childhood Pollock would move nine times, travelling through the Southwest where he would be exposed to Native American and Mexican imagery which would impact his painting. In 1928, Pollock, his mother, and his four brothers moved to Los Angeles and Jackson Pollock enrolled in Manual Arts High School.

While at Manual Arts High School, Jackson Pollock studied under Philip Guston, who introduced him to surrealism, European modern art, and encouraged his interest in theosophical literature. These spiritual explorations prepared Pollock for explorations of unconscious imagery in his later paintings.

In 1930, Pollock moved to New York City with his brother Charles. He was drawn to the Old Masters and studied mural painting while settling into Greenwich Village. He lived in poverty, working as a janitor and stealing food. At the same time, exciting art projects began to take off for Pollock.

In 1932, he was invited to participate in his first exhibition, The 8th Exhibition of Watercolors, Pastels, and Drawings by American and French Artists at the Brooklyn Museum. In 1934, he painted a large canvas, Going West, which was influenced by his travels and childhood. In 1937, he was assigned to the Easel Division of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States during the Great Depression. Outside of his art career, Pollock met his future wife and biggest supporter of his frantic lifestyle, fellow artist Lee Krasner, in 1936.

Jackson Pollock was a reclusive and volatile person who struggled throughout his life with alcoholism. As early as 1938, Pollock went to treatment centers for his addiction. After this, his artistic style leaned further into abstraction, assimilating motifs by artists such as Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. In 1943, when the Federal Art Project came to an end, Jackson Pollock signed a contract with Peggy Guggenheim at her Art of This Century Gallery. He painted his first wall-sized work here, breaking into his signature style.

His widely known technique of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface (“drip technique”) was developed between 1947-1950. These were also called action paintings and became a recording of the performance of painting itself. He supposedly abstained from drinking from 1948-1950, during which he had multiple solo exhibitions and was selected for the Venice Biennale. A year later, he was drinking again.

In the 1950s, Pollock’s style changed again completely. His earlier imagery began to reappear as he painted almost exclusively in black enamel on white canvas. After 1953, his health and production lessened. In 1956, Pollock died in an alcohol-related driving accident. Retrospectives, large-scale exhibitions, and collections of his work have been held at large art institutions from the MoMA to the Tate Modern. He was a major painter of the Abstract Expressionist movement, and has become one of the most famous symbols of the alienated modern artist.