January 2016 - Jackson Pollock
Convergence, 1952 (393.7 x 237.5 cm) (via https://www.jackson-pollock.org/convergence.jsp)
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA
"Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912, in Cody, Wyoming. He grew up in Arizona and California and in 1928 began to study painting at the Manual Arts High School, Los Angeles. In fall 1930 Pollock moved to New York and studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League.
By the mid-1940s, Pollock was painting in a completely abstract manner, liberating himself from the vertical constraints of an easel by affixing unstretched raw canvas to the floor. In 1947, his “drip style,” marked by the use of sticks, trowels, or knives to drip and splatter paint, as well as pouring paint directly from the can, emerged. Reminiscent of the Surrealist notions of the subconscious and automatic painting, Pollock’s drips, also called “action paintings,” revolutionized the potential for contemporary art and furthered the development of Abstract Expressionism."