8 KILLED IN 2 LONG ISLAND AUTO CRASHES; JACKSON POLLOCK AMONG VICTIMS
Lee Krasner, an established painter in her own right. Acquaintances here said that she was now in Europe. For the last ten years the couple had been living near East Hampton, where Mr. Pollock converted a near-by barn into a studio.
Mr. Pollock was born in 1912 on his father's farm near Cody, Wyo. He grew up in Wyoming, Arizona and California. Showing an aptitude for painting, he left Los Angeles High School at 17 to travel to New York, where he studied at the Art at the Students League for two years.
It was there, Mr. Pollock once said, that Benton gave him the "only formal instruction" he ever had.
In the early forties he reacted against his earlier naturalistic approach and began painting in a semi-abstract, expressionist idiom.
By 1947 he had evolved the "dripped paint" technique that characterized the best-known period of his work.
A retrospective show covering eighteen years of his work opened at the Sidney Janis Gallery in November 1955. The exhibition comprised sixteen canvases representing the artist's different artistic periods.
The New York Times critic commented at the time on "the ruthless steps he has taken to shatter the convention of art and introduce, for the first time in art, raw and naked, the elemental and largely subconscious promptings of his creative nature"
The New York Times
Published: August 12, 1956