Jackson Pollock

He was born on January 28th, 1912 and he died on August 11th, 1956. He was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was very famous but he was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality and he sometimes struggled with alcoholism. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner. She became an important influence on his career and on his legacy. At the age of 44 he had an alcohol-related car accident. In December 1956, there was a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York city, and there was a larger more comprehensive exhibition there in 1967. More recently, in 1998 and 1999, he was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London. In 2000, Pollock was the subject of an Academy Award–winning film, Pollock, directed by and starring Ed Harris.