Charles Pollock

Charles Cecil Pollock (December 25, 1902, in Denver, Colorado - May 8, 1988, in Paris) was an American abstract painter and the eldest brother of artist Jackson Pollock. Biography Pollock was born on December 25, 1902, in Denver, Colorado. He was the eldest of five brothers born to Stella May McClure and LeRoy Pollock. His father, who was born as a McCoy, had taken the surname of his parents' neighbors, who adopted him after his own parents died within a year of each other. In 1926 Pollock moved to New York to study painting. In 1930, he and another brother, Frank Pollock, persuaded their brother Jackson to join them there, effectively launching his own artistic career. In 1935, he moved to Washington, D.C. to work with the Resettlement Administration. Two years later he took a job as a political cartoonist for the United Automobile Workers' newspaper in Detroit, Michigan. From 1938 to 1942 Pollock supervised Mural Painting and Graphic Arts for the Works Progress Administration (WPA)'s Federal Art Project in Michigan. After visiting Michigan State University in 1942, he joined the faculty in the Art Department, where he would teach for the next two decades.