Jackson Pollock

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc., New York
Washburn Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Francis Valentine O'Connor, ed., Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Drawings, and Other Works, Supplement Number One, New York, 1995, p. 49, no. 43 (P13), illustrated

Jackson Pollock is recognized as one of the Masters of 20^th century art, whose impact even during his own time was radical and far-reaching. A seminal figure in the emergence of American Abstract Expressionism, it was by and large, the celebrity of Pollock which was the catalyst that would prove critical to the fledgling art movement of the 1940s and 1950s that ultimately brought New York to the forefront of the art world.  

Jackson Pollock's most sublime quality was the deeply intuitive genius of his line and the intimate connection between his artistic impulse, his wrist, and his medium. The tracery of the lines – whether executed in ink or enamel and oil paints – has the same sense of primal expression as if the artist's thought is translated into fluid presence on the paper.  Untitled (M14) is a superb example of Pollock's draftsmanship, created at a critical moment in his oeuvre. Executed in ink, screened onto paper, the present work is from a rare series of unique serigraphs that Pollock made between the years 1950 and 1952. The work is a concentrated concurrent corollary to the mature drip paintings rendered at the time, relating to an important group of poured drawings that date between 1950 to 1951, in addition to relating to select poured black paintings executed during 1951 and 1952. Although there is a controlled chaos of line and gesture to the present work, which poignantly defy the chaos of the artistic psyche, the work is at once vaguely figurative, with the gestures of ink laying bare Pollock's personal and tormented angst.