Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 - August 11, 1956) is one of the most famous post-war American artists. The action painting of Pollock, a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, created a new era of non-representational art.

Born January 28, 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, Pollock studied painting at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles in the late 1920s and became friends with Philip Guston. In the fall of 1930, Pollock moved to New York to learn from the regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton in the Art Students League. Pollock, who joined the Works Progress Administration in 1937, painted murals in a style reminiscent of Benton and the Mexican mural painter Jose Clemente Orosco. After the WPA project was completed, Pollock began to paint a number of quirky works, and Surrealist works inspired by Joan Miro's work.

Peggy Guggenheim, an early supporter of Pollock's work, held Pollock's first solo exhibition at the "Art of This Century".The following year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York purchased his work for the first time. Works produced in the Long Island atelier in the late 1940s were a good example of his entire career. Works such as "Blue Poles" (1952) attracted the attention of the media and made Pollock a celebrity beyond the art world.

On August 11, 1956, Pollock died at the young age of 44 in a car accident involving his mistress Ruth Kligman and his friend in East Hampton, New York. Pollock's life was made into a movie as "Pollock" (2000). The original is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, directed, starred, and produced by Ed Harris.

His work is now in the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Tate Gallery in London.