Pollock's family left Cody, Wyo., 11 months after his birth, and he grew up in California and Arizona. In 1930 Pollock followed a brother to New York City, where he enrolled at the Art Students League under his brother's teacher, the regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. In the fall of 1935 he came to be employed on the WPA Federal Art Project as an easel painter. This provided economic security during the years of the Great Depression and the opportunity to develop his art through early 1943. In 1937 he began psychiatric treatment for alcoholism, and he briefly suffered a nervous breakdown in 1938. From 1939 through 1941 he was in treatment... [View Full Biography]