Jackson Pollock Artwork

Paul Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming. His family moved to Arizona, and then on to Chico in California. Showing a keen interest in painting, he took up an opportunity to study at LA's Manual Arts High School. After finishing his studies in LA his education continued when he moved to New York City with his brother Charles, to attend the Art Students League of New York.

From there he drifted into working with the WPA artists project - for many years his work went unnoticed and unappreciated. Finally Peggy Guggenheim took an interest in his artwork, and featured some pieces in her gallery. Jackson was so short of cash that Peggy Guggenheim made a bizarre deal with him - for a monthly sum of $300 she would own all his paintings, except for one per year.

After the war, he married another well-known American artist, Lee Krasner, and together they moved into a small house in Springs on Long Island - Peggy Guggenheim lent them the money for the downpayment. The house came with a small barn, which converted easily into a studio.

Over the new few years, Jackson Pollock abandoned the long-held tradition of painting with an easel and brush. Instead he preferred to lay the canvas on the ground, applying the paint by more immediate techniques such as dripping, pouring, throwing and splattering. The artist would move around the painting, working at it from all four sides. This way of creating art was coined action painting. To some Pollock's drip paintings were devoid of substance and structure. The artist always denied this, stating that every painting was constructed according to a plan, a vision. He also stopped using descriptive titles for his canvases, instead preferring to number them - he felt names could not help but color the painting's meaning.

In 1951, despite the popularity and commercial success of his drip paintings, Jackson Pollock suddenly abandoned this technique. He returned to more representational material, painted in an apparently less 'random' way. In 1956 the artist died in terrible car-crash - he was drunk at the wheel.

In 2006, Jackson Pollock artwork achieved a world-record when his painting 'No 5, 1948', achieved a staggering sum of $140 million dollars at private sale.