Untitled,

1951, printed 1964

Pollock’s 1951 exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery, at the height of the artist's fame, was a landmark event for the New York art world. The show’s monochrome black paintings marked a turning point for Pollock in which he reintroduced figurative imagery into his compositions. Heads and bodies emerge from gestural skeins, alluding to the figures of Picasso and the Surrealists and revealing the artist’s process of contending with his place in the history of modern art. The paintings were also notable for the technique used—paint was both poured and dripped onto canvas; Helen Frankenthaler cited the influence of this exhibition on the development of her own poured paint technique. From the show’s twenty-six paintings, Pollock selected six that he reproduced as a portfolio of screenprints in the hope of introducing this shift in his practice to a wider audience.