Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948 transformed the history of art.  

It’s highly sophisticated interplay of paint, movement, and dynamic energy is the result of an entirely new form of painting.

Laid down on raw, unprimed canvas, this highly poetic composition is the result of Pollock’s revolutionary new technique that equated to ‘drawing in space.’ Very little, if any, of the pigment is applied directly to the surface of the painting, instead it is poured, dripped, flicked, and pooled into a lyrical arrangement of intertwined black trails.

These are then interspersed by dabs of vivid red pigment—something which Pollock occasionally included to add a sense of drama—in addition to several discreet areas where he has introduced daubs of purple paint.

Laying his canvas directly on the floor and working from above allowed Pollock to maneuver himself around the entire canvas, liberating himself from the traditions of easel painting to create a complete visual experience.  

Using this new technique Pollock was able to involve his whole body in both the composition and execution of the painting. He said he felt more at ease, more intimately involved in its creation. Pollock often said he felt he was inside his paintings, involved in a constant tussle between what he wanted the painting to be and what the paint wanted to do on its own.  

This revolutionary new approach captivated the public’s interest and Pollock appeared in magazines and TV shows all over America, with one influential magazine even asking if he was the greatest American painter of the twentieth century.  

‍Number 7A, 1948 is a masterpiece of twentieth-century art. It’s impressive size and complex composition results in a majestic and mesmeric canvas that represents a key moment not only in the artist’s short but explosive career, but also in the wider history of art.  

Radiant in its materiality and radical in its formal refinement, Constantin Brancusi’s  is an icon of modern art. Through his own powerful vision, Brancusi transformed the female face into an abstracted assortment of harmonious forms, forever changing the course of sculpture in the twentieth century.  

Here, the head of Margit Pogany, an art student that the artist met in 1910, is reimagined as continuum of graceful curves. Sweeping planar arcs denote her gaze and large eyes, while from behind, her neat bun forms a spiral, a serpentine lock of hair tucked just behind her ear. Physiognomic detail is distilled to the most elemental and pure forms in Brancusi’s quest for harmony. “It is not the outward form which is real, it is the essence of things,” he once stated. “On this basis, it is impossible for anyone to express anything real by imitating surface appearances.”

Brancusi was a master of his material. First executed in marble, Brancusi transformed this motif into bronze in around 1913, creating six casts of . In the early casts, he used gilding to achieve his artistic aims, a technique rarely seen in his practice, the finish as important as the subject itself. “Each material has a particular language that I do not set out to eliminate and replace with my own,” Brancusi explained, “but simply to make it express what I am thinking, what I am seeing, in its own language, that is its alone.”

The gilded surface conjures endless reflections of light, while at the same time, the figure appears to glow from within, as if an ancient goddess or icon from a past epoch. Together with the luminous gilding, the dark patina of her hair evokes the ancient art of East Asia. In his assimilation of an individual presence from his own time, with a look to the appearance and meaning of artworks of the past, Brancusi created an entirely unique sculptural language and a new form of femininity.