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The Death of General Wolfe

Benjamin West
The Death of General Wolfe (Detail), 1770
oil on canvas
152.6 x 214.5 cm
Transfer from the Canadian War Memorials, 1921 (Gift of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, England, 1918)
National Gallery of Canada (no. 8007)

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Jackson Pollock

1912 - 1956

1912

Born 28 January on the Watkins Ranch, Cody, Wyoming. Parents are tenant farmers.

1913 - 27

Family moves around to various farms in Arizona and California; father also works as surveyor.

1928

Family settles in Los Angeles. Pollock enrols in Manual Arts High School, from which he is expelled for his role in published attacks against the faculty.

1930

Moves to New York and enrols at Art Students League. Studies with Thomas Hart Benton, a prominent realist painter of the contemporary American scene, and meets Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco, who is working on a mural with Benton. Later takes Benton's mural class.

1933

Studies figure drawing and painting with American modernist John Sloan, and watches Mexican artist Diego Rivera paint murals at the New Workers School, New York.

1934

In summer, travels with brother on 8,000-mile journey exploring coal mining districts, deserts, and the American west coast. Continues to live in poverty. Returns to New York, where he works as a janitor.

1935

Employed as a stonecutter, and then is hired by the WPA Federal Art Project, which provides him a subsistence wage until 1943. Produces easel paintings in which he explores an expressionistic figurative style.

1936

Works with Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siquerios. Explores new techniques and new synthetic painting materials. Becomes interested in spontaneity and "controlled accidents."

1937 - 39

Undergoes Jungian psychoanalysis for treatment of alcoholism, keeps painting, and becomes interested in the role of myth and the subconscious in art.

1942

Influx of European artists escaping the war. Fellow artist Robert Motherwell introduces Pollock to Surrealist principles of "psychic automatism." Work becomes increasingly abstract.

1943

Term with WPA ends. Decorates ties and works as an art museum guard. First solo show at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Centu ry gallery; she offers him a contract for production until 1947, freeing him to return to painting full time.

1946

Moves with Lee Krasner, painter and spouse, to Easthampton, New York. Works by laying raw, unstretched canvas flat on the floor, attacking the painting from all four sides, pouring trails of paint directly from the can, or dripping it from brushes, yielding a spontaneous, gestural expression over the entire canvas.

1947 - 50

Creates very large "drip" canvases, some extending up to eighteen feet wide.

1948

Reintroduces the figure into his paintings (Cut Out Figure, 1948, on loan to NGC), often using black Duco enamel paint and rich impasted surfaces.

1948 - 50

Exhibits widely in Europe, including at the Venice Biennale. Joins with the other "Irascibles" in protesting the Metropolitan Museum's contempt for modern painting.

1949

Is popularized in Life magazine article, "Jackson Pollock Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?"

1950

In the fall paints No. 29 (NGC) on glass, at the suggestion of photographer friend Hans Namuth, who wants to film him at work facing the camera. (An excerpt from the film can be seen outside this gallery.)

1956

August 11, dies in a car accident. The Museum of Modern Art exhibition planned as "Artists in Mid-Career" becomes a memorial exhibition.

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Birth name

Jackson Pollock

Born

Born in Cody, Wyoming, 28 January 1912

Died

Died in East Hampton, New York, 11 August 1956

Nationality

American

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