Jackson Pollock biographer and Pulitzer winner Gregory White Smith dies in South Carolina

AIKEN, S.C. – The co-author of a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the artist Jackson Pollock has died.

Gregory White Smith died Thursday in his home from a brain tumour. He was 62.

Funeral director Greg Edwards of the George Funeral Home in Aiken confirmed Smith’s death, as did family attorney Elizabeth Petit.

Petit says the cause of death was a brain tumour that Smith battled for almost 40 years. Petit says Smith died in the Aiken home he shared with his partner and co-author, Steven Naifeh.

Smith and Naifeh’s biography of the artist, “Jackson Pollock: An American Saga,” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991, a year after it was published.

Petit says the two men wrote 18 books together, including, “Van Gogh: The Life,” published in 2011.