Untitled

This drawing-over-print has all the hallmarks of the spontaneous, gestural qualities-and unconventional materials-for which Jackson Pollock is known. His work in the early and mid-1940s often took up Surrealist imagery. This is especially apparent in the print underlying the drawing in this work, on which forms resembling a fish or lobster, eyes, a leg and arm, and a wing are visible. During 1944-45, Pollock experimented with engraving, working under British artist Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988), and this sheet contains two of the proofs they pulled at that time.

Pollock drew on one side of the support (which is printed on both sides with the same plate) in the vibrant primary colors of yellow, red, and blue in addition to black, leaving mostly clear the shape at upper right, emphasizing the outline of the winglike shape at top center, and shading in between and behind the leg- and armlike forms in the lower half of the work, as well as both vertical edges. Both sides of the sheet were weakly impressed with a counterproof newspaper sheet, with what appears to have been advertisements; some of the text visible in counterproof is "Kirkman pure white Flak[es]," "Athlete's foot," "Reserve .!.!.Whisky," and "Manhattan," The numbers "8 3 5 94" are additionally visible in the engraving.