Pollock Charles
Pollock Charles
Charles Cecil Pollock was born 25 December 1902 in Denver, Colorado. He was an American abstract painter and the eldest brother of artist Jackson Pollock.
Charles Pollock’s career as a painter is sharply divided into two periods. Until the mid 1940s, Pollock followed the social realist movement, studying under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League of New York. Pollock was inspired by the works of the Mexican Mural Renaissance, particularly the works of Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. During the Great Depression and the New Deal era of the 1930s, Pollock began working for the Resettlement Administration, alongside fellow Social Realist Ben Shahn, supervising murals through the Midwestern and Southern United States. Pollock was then selected as supervisor of the mural painting and graphic arts division of the Federal Art Project at the WPA, settling in Detroit, Michigan.
Charles Pollock abandoned social realism in the 1940s, and turned to abstract expressionism and color field painting. Some attribute the shift to the influence of his famous brother Jackson, although Charles Pollock painted in a very calm and organized manner unlike Jackson’s drip painting style. He passed away 8 May 1988 in Paris.