The Musée Picasso in Paris is devoting an exhibition to Jackson Pollock's early creative years, featuring some 100 works that helped shape the art of the inventor of action painting.
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) had always been fascinated by the work of the Spanish painter, ever since his discovery of Guernica at MoMA in 1939. An expressive path that he embarked upon very early in his career. The Musée Picasso in Paris reminds us of this with this exhibition, the first since the Pinacothèque in 2008, dedicated to his shamanic inspirations. Co-curators Joanne Snrech and Orane Stalpers shed light on the preparatory experiments carried out between 1934 and 1947 by this master of abstract expressionism, inventor of "action painting". All these creations, reflecting the diverse influences that nourished his complex artistic and intellectual work, are on display at the museum.
NUMBERED ROUTE
This native of Cody, in the heart of the Wyoming plains, quickly demonstrated his multi-faceted art, inspired by native American art and by the vibrant New York art scene driven by exiled European surrealists. Over the course of his first decade, Jackson Pollock mapped out an extraordinary trajectory to become the iconic figure of American culture in the 1950s.
An artist already under the influence, struggling with alcoholism since the age of 15, his inner demons, successive rehabs and therapies. The exhibition route, divided into numbered rooms, echoing the works he numbered from 1948 onwards, traces the different approaches of this experimenter, right up to his first dripping works.
This future "Jack the Dripper" developed an early passion for Amerindian art, discovered at MoMA in 1941. But also for Indian rituals, the regionalist realism of the Great Depression, the aesthetics of Mexican muralists and the European avant-garde, notably cubism.
BETWEEN DREAM AND REALITY
The museum space features paintings, prints, sculptures, psychoanalytical drawings and experiments with materials such as pouring and dripping. Some works plunge us into the midst of chimerical creatures between dream and reality, while others revisit the surrealist hybrid figure of the Minotaur, so dear to Picasso's work. Also featured are his Accabonac Creek Series, inspired by the natural landscapes that surrounded him.
The tour also retraces the places and people that marked the turning points in his creative evolution. These include the artist theorist John Graham, who pushed him to recognition, and his time at Atelier 17, where he rubbed shoulders with such exiled European artists as Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and André Masson. Several of these artists' works are on display.
RAW ENERGY FUSION
This new exhibition sheds light on the artist's expressive approach. This is particularly evident in Mural, a painting halfway between abstraction and figuration commissioned in 1943 by Peggy Guggenheim for the entrance to her New York residence. The art collector also instigated her very first monographic exhibition, at her gallery Art of this Century. This work is also the artist's "first decisive experimentation with space and monumentality", as the co-curators point out. And it was at this point that the painter abandoned figuration to plunge into abstract expressionism, and then into the dripping technique.
Jackson Pollock's early creative years, presented at the Musée Picasso, show the latent genius of this demiurge and all-over enthusiast, married to the painter Lee Krasner, who always believed that paintings had an autonomous life.
"JACKSON POLLOCK: THE EARLY YEARS (1934-1947) MUSÉE PICASSO
5, RUE DE THORIGNY, PARIS 3E OCTOBER 15, 2024 - JANUARY 19, 2025
MUSEEPICASSOPARIS.FR
