Charles Pollock’s Chapala series refers to a sojourn in 1955–56 in a small village Ajijic, on Lake Chapala in Mexico. Like other artists of the New York School, including his younger brother Jackson, in the 1940s Pollock switched from painting realistic illustrations of American life to an abstract language. This painting, in which chance and design, freedom and control are held in elegant and expressive balance, has a pulsating, breathing life of its own.