She was Jackson Pollock’s “death-car girl” — and quickly became mistress and muse to an impressive string of New York’s most famous postwar artists.
Free spirited Ruth Kligman was a 26-year-old art student when she met Pollock at Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village in March 1956.
Artist Audrey Flack said Kligman planned the meeting.
“Ruth asked, ‘Who are the best artists? Who should I know, [and] in what order — one, two, and three?’ ” Flack recounted in a Vanity Fair interview. “I said, ‘Jackson Pollock, Bill de Kooning, and Franz Kline,’ and told her they all go to the Cedar Bar.”
For five months, the Newark-born stunner and Pollock had a tumultuous affair, with Kligman boldly moving into Pollock’s Hamptons home when his wife stormed off to Europe.
A year after Pollock was killed in a car crash that injured Kligman, she began an affair with his rival, Willem de Kooning. She was also close to Andy Warhol, Franz Kline and Jasper Johns. She had a 7-year marriage to Spanish painter Carlos Sansegundo, and was living alone when she died in 2010, at age 80.