Jackson Pollock No.6 - Yellow and Red Year 1946

Provenance:

Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956), known professionally as Jackson Pollock, was an American painter and a major figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement. He was well known for his unique style of drip painting.

During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety and was a major artist of his generation. Regarded as reclusive, he had a volatile personality and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and legacy.

Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related single-car accident. In December 1956, four months after his death, he was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. A larger and more comprehensive exhibition of his work was held there in 1967. In 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at the Tate Gallery in London.

 
Early Life (1912–1936)
Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1912, the youngest of five sons. His parents, Stella May (née McClure) and LeRoy Pollock, were born and raised in Tingley, Iowa, and were educated at Tingley High School. Pollock’s mother is interred at Tingley Cemetery, Ringgold County, Iowa.

His father had been born with the surname McCoy but later took the surname of his adoptive parents, neighbors who adopted him after his own parents died within a year of each other. Stella and LeRoy Pollock were Presbyterian; they were of Irish and Scots-Irish descent, respectively.

LeRoy Pollock was a farmer and later worked as a land surveyor for the government, moving frequently for different jobs. Stella, proud of her family’s heritage as weavers, made and sold dresses as a teenager.

Pollock attended Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, from which he was expelled. He had already been expelled in 1928 from another high school. During his early life, Pollock explored Native American culture while accompanying his father on surveying trips.

In 1930, following his older brother Charles Pollock, he moved to New York City, where both studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Benton’s rural American subject matter had little influence on Pollock’s work, but his rhythmic use of paint and fierce independence proved more lasting. In the early 1930s, Pollock spent a summer touring the western United States with fellow art student Glen Rounds and Benton, their teacher.

 
Career (1936–1954)
Pollock was introduced to the use of liquid paint in 1936 at an experimental workshop in New York City run by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. He later used paint pouring as one of several techniques in works from the early 1940s, such as Male and Female and Composition with Pouring I.

After moving to Springs, New York, he began painting with his canvases laid out on the studio floor, developing what later became known as his “drip” technique. From 1938 to 1942, Pollock worked for the WPA Federal Art Project.

During this period, Pollock was attempting to manage his alcoholism. From 1938 through 1941, he underwent Jungian psychotherapy with Dr. Joseph Henderson and later with Dr. Violet Staub de Laszlo in 1941–1942. Henderson encouraged Pollock to express himself through art, urging him to make drawings. Jungian concepts and archetypes were subsequently reflected in his paintings. In recent years, historians have hypothesized that Pollock may have had bipolar disorder.

 
Peggy Guggenheim and Mural
Pollock signed a gallery contract with Peggy Guggenheim in July 1943. He received a commission to create Mural (1943), a work measuring approximately 8 feet tall by 20 feet long, intended for the entryway of her new townhouse. At the suggestion of her friend and advisor Marcel Duchamp, Pollock painted the work on canvas rather than directly on the wall so it could be portable.

After seeing the painting, art critic Clement Greenberg wrote:

“I took one look at it and thought, ‘Now that’s great art,’ and I knew Jackson was the greatest painter this country had produced.”
The catalog introducing Pollock’s first exhibition described his talent as “volcanic. It has fire. It is unpredictable. It is undisciplined. It spills out of itself in a mineral prodigality, not yet crystallized.”

 
Provenance
Works of easel painting technique using casein or pyroxylin on canvas, unsigned.
Origin: United States, Arizona, circa 1940.

Provenance:

Owner: Lee Krasner
Sold to Robert Brady, international collector of art and designer, established in Cuernavaca, Mexico
With original certificate
Section of rights notarized by Robert Brady to Carla Cecilia Cinto
 
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