Attributed to Jackson Pollock, no coa, private collection, medium: oil measurements: 38"HX50"W framed, mint condition Biography: Paul Jackson Pollock was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. Paul Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1912,[3] the youngest of five brothers. His parents, Stella May (née McClure) and LeRoy Pollock, were born and grew up in Tingley, Iowa, and were educated at Tingley High School. Pollock's mother is interred at Tingley Cemetery, Ringgold County, Iowa. His father had been born with the surname McCoy, but took the surname of his adoptive parents, neighbors who adopted him after his own parents had died within a year of each other. Stella and LeRoy Pollock were Presbyterian; they were of Irish and Scots-Irish descent, respectively.LeRoy Pollock was a farmer and later a land surveyor for the government, moving for different jobs. Stella, proud of her family's heritage as weavers, made and sold dresses as a teenager.In November 1912, Stella took her sons to San Diego; Jackson was just 10 months old and would never return to Cody.He subsequently grew up in Arizona and Chico, California. He was widely noticed for his "drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface, enabling him to view and paint his canvases from all angles. Pollock was introduced to the use of liquid paint in 1936 at an experimental workshop in New York City by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. In the summer, he went to Dartmouth College to study Jose Clemente Orozco's 3,200 square foot mural, “The Epic of American Civilization.” He later used paint pouring as one of several techniques on canvases of the early 1940s, such as Male and Female and Composition with Pouring I. After his move to Springs, New York, he began painting with his canvases laid out on the studio floor and he developed what was later called his "drip" technique.From 1938 to 1942 Pollock worked for the WPA Federal Art Project.During this time Pollock was trying to deal with his established alcoholism; from 1938 through 1941 he underwent Jungian psychotherapy with Dr. Joseph L. Henderson and later with Dr. Violet Staub de Laszlo in 1941–42. Henderson engaged him through his art, encouraging Pollock to make drawings. Jungian concepts and archetypes were expressed in his paintings. Some historians have hypothesized that Pollock might have had bipolar disorder. Pollock signed a gallery contract with Peggy Guggenheim in July 1943. He received the commission to create the 8-by-20-foot (2.4 by 6.1 m) Mural (1943) for the entry to her new townhouse. At the suggestion of her friend and advisor Marcel Duchamp, Pollock painted the work on canvas, rather than the wall, so that it would be portable. After seeing the big mural, the art critic Clement Greenberg wrote: "I took one look at it and I thought, 'Now that's great art,' and I knew Jackson was the greatest painter this country had produced."The catalog introducing his first exhibition described Pollock's talent as "volcanic. It has fire. It is unpredictable. It is undisciplined. It spills out of itself in a mineral prodigality, not yet crystallized."