Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)

Painted in October 1950 on a canvas measuring 266.7 by 525.8 centimetres, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) is one of the largest and most commanding works Jackson Pollock produced during his celebrated drip painting period. Working on the canvas laid flat on his studio floor in East Hampton, New York, Pollock moved around and across it, pouring and dripping enamel paint from sticks, hardened brushes, and cans held at arm's length above the surface. The result is a vast, all-over composition of interlacing lines — black, brown, white, and touches of teal — in which no single area dominates and the eye is invited to wander continuously across the field.\n\nThe title points to the month of its creation and to something elemental: the painting breathes the cadences of the natural world without depicting it. Photographer Hans Namuth documented Pollock at work during this period, and his images give a sense of the physical intensity of the process — a full-body performance as much as an act of painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired Autumn Rhythm in 1957 from Pollock's estate for $20,000, and it has since become one of the defining works of Abstract Expressionism, a testament to Pollock's conviction that gesture, scale, and material could carry as much emotional weight as any traditional subject.