Green Silver by Jackson Pollock

Green Silver is a name that has been given to an untitled work by Jackson Pollock. This piece currently hangs in the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

This picture is one of Pollock's most famous works, and it is a prime example of the artistic genre that he somewhat single handedly helped to create: the genre that would later become known as Abstract Expressionism.

The swirling lines and splashes of colour in Green Silver are characteristic of Pollock's work.

Towards the end of his career, Pollock only touched his canvases minimally: instead of spreading the paint on them with a brush, he would flick or splatter the paint on from a distance, avoiding direct contact between brush and canvas. This tendency is certainly in evidence in Green Silver.

Pollock's abstract expressionist paintings draw on an eclectic range of influences. For example, American Indian sand paintings, Mexican murals and Surrealism are among the key influences of Pollock's work.

It is definitely safe to say that, despite the broad and varied genres of art that influenced him, though, Pollock drew these generic influences together to create something new and unique. Looking at a painting such as Green Silver, art historians can instantly see that this painting is definitively 'Pollock'.

Green Silver is one of Pollock's later works. It was painted in 1949, after he had completed a numbered series of art works. Pollock was born in 1912 in Wyoming and he later travelled to New York from the West Coast. He died in 1956, having, it can definitely be argued, perfected the genre of abstract expressionism.

The materials that Pollock used to create Green Silver are also worth remarking on. Pollock did not use conventional oil paints to make this work. Rather, he used a combination of aluminium paint and enamel.

The result is something with colours that are perhaps more startling ans surreal than those of paintings done in conventional oils.