By Adelaide Maloney ’22
On February 23, 2020, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts closed the doors to the exhibition of Mural: Jackson Pollock | Katharina Grosse, which had run from July 1, 2019. This exhibition had featured only two paintings, Jackson Pollock’s Mural and an untitled work by Katharina Grosse, which had been commissioned by the MFA. As the exhibition has closed, now is a good time to look back at it and the artists who were featured.
Jackson Pollock was an American artist who lived from 1912 to 1956, and was most well-known for his abstract paintings. Mural, as shown in the exhibition, greatly aided in pushing it into prominence as it was commissioned by art collector Peggy Guggenheim for her home.
The painting mainly uses line and shape to convey itself, and is roughly twenty feet wide and eight feet tall. Mural was painted onto canvas, though the word typically would denote a painting done directly onto a wall. This allows the painting to be portable, and it has appeared in many exhibitions prior to that of the MFA.
The second painter whose work was featured in the exhibition was Katharina Grosse. She is a German artist who was born in 1961. Her untitled work in this exhibition was commissioned to accompany Pollock’s own painting. In some ways it echoes his work, as it was large enough to span across the MFA’s exhibition room, and it was painted onto canvas. Grosse used acrylic paint in this instance, and made use of shape to communicate through this piece. It hung freely within the exhibit as opposed to being attached to a wall.
This exhibition showed less pieces than is typical, but that was not to its detriment. The styles and skill sets of both Pollock and Grosse were well represented by their paintings within the gallery, and it gave the paintings more prominence than they may have had in a larger exhibition.
Overall, this exhibition showed off its paintings and their painters amazingly, and it was superb while it was at the MFA.
