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Number 28, 1950

1950
Not on view
After Pollock’s move to Springs, in the town of East Hampton on Long Island in 1945, he took up painting in a barn adjacent to the home he shared with his wife, fellow artist Lee Krasner. This larger space expanded his practice, allowing for painting on and around unstretched canvases on the floor, a process the artist likened to Native American sand painting. Pollock appears to have begun this composition by dripping and spilling great amounts of black and ocher-colored medium onto the canvas. These hues are visible from the reverse side of the canvas, but they became buried under subsequent layers of paint applied in acrobatic swirls and dribbles. With their expansive scale and decentered compositions, the "drip" paintings exceed their own boundaries, "as though refusing to accept the artificiality of an ‘ending,’" in the words of artist Allan Kaprow.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Number 28, 1950
  • Artist: Jackson Pollock (American, Cody, Wyoming 1912–1956 East Hampton, New York)
  • Date: 1950
  • Medium: Enamel on canvas
  • Dimensions: 68 1/16 in. × 8 ft. 8 13/16 in. (172.9 × 266.2 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman, in honor of her grandchildren, Ellen Steinberg Coven and Dr. Peter Steinberg, 2006
  • Object Number: 2006.32.51
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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Untitled, Jackson Pollock American, Black ink on paper
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Jackson Pollock
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Untitled (Page from a Lost Sketchbook), Jackson Pollock American, Brush and ink on paper (recto); brush and ink on paper (verso)
Untitled (Page from a Lost Sketchbook)
Jackson Pollock
ca. 1939–42
Untitled (Figure Composition), Jackson Pollock American, Gouache on paper
Untitled (Figure Composition)
Jackson Pollock
ca. 1938–41
Untitled, Jackson Pollock American, Colored pencils, pen and black ink on paper
Untitled
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Sheet of Studies, Jackson Pollock American, Pen and black ink on paper
Sheet of Studies
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