What caused American painting to take off as it did in the mid-20th century? The painter Willem de Kooning attributed its initial success to the work of his friend Jackson Pollock whom he credited with ‘breaking the ice’. My talk looks at the career of the famous action painter and assesses how his contribution to painting (including his infamous drip technique) contributed to Abstract Expressionism becoming an artistic phenomenon worldwide. Pollock’s path left a particularly significant legacy in terms of future developments.