Pollock's America: Jackson Pollock in Venice - The "Irascibles" and the New York School

More than fifty years after the memorable exhibition organised in Venice by Peggy Guggenheim in 1950, this volume features a selection of masterpieces - from major American and European museums and private collections - giving the opportunity to reflect on American painting of the second half of the 20th century and its importance in the cultural formation of generations of artists; a season that marked the radical and definitive move of US artistic experience away from that of Europe and the definition of new paths and unusual expressive codes. The central figure is Jackson Pollock who, nowadays, can certainly be considered a classic: his role in the foundation of a new language and a whole season of American culture appears to be beyond dispute. A selection of extraordinary masterpieces retrace the artistic parabola of this leading figure of the second half of the 20th century, from his figurative beginnings to the Action Painting period, from Naked Man (1938-41) to the works of the 1940s (The Moon Woman, 1942; Two, 1943-45) and 1950s (Unformed Figure, 1953; Untitled, 1952-56). Flanking them are works by artists who lived and worked with Pollock in the period after World War II, known as the "Irascibles", leading figures of the so-called "New York School": Mark Rothko, Richard Pousette-Dart, Lee Krasner, Arshile Gorky, Barnett Newman, William Baziotes, Adolph Gottlieb, Willem de Kooning, Hedda Sterne, James Brooks, Jimmy Ernst and others, interpreters of the extraordinary cultural activity of the New York of those years.