Pollock Exhibition: A Myth Arrives from America

Abstract

The largest ever Jackson Pollock exhibition in Europe opened at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome in March 1958. In this very short review, the celebrated art historian Lionello Venturi is extremely positive about Pollock’s work, concluding: “The charm they exude is one of the greatest in all modern art.”

Keywords:

• abstract expressionism
• Thomas Hart Benton
• Jackson Pollock

Notes

1 Translator’s note: here Venturi may have been referring to Pollock’s 1937 work Landscape with Steer, a lithograph with airbrushed lacquer additions.

2 Translator’s note: Venturi dates Blue Poles to the year 1953, a common mistake given that Pollock himself painted ‘53’ onto the canvas, only to later change it to the correct date ‘52’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lionello Venturi

Translated from Italian by Madeline Robinson

Originally published as “La mostra di Pollock. Dall'America arriva un mito,” in L'Espresso (March 23rd, 1958): 16.