London, Sep 29 One of the greatest American artists, Jackson Pollock, hid his signature inside one of his most important painting, which was priced at around 88 million pounds, according to an art historian.

Henry Adams, an art historian who has written a book on Pollock's life, said that the abstract impressionist camouflaged the letters of his name with the vibrant lines and colours of his 1943 work Mural.

The 20ft by 8ft canvas helped cement the young artist's reputation as a painter of international importance, but its "hidden message" has never before been noticed.

Adams said that it was his wife who first pointed out the letters after glancing at his print of Mural over breakfast.

"She suddenly said she could make out the letters S-O-N in blackish paint in the upper right area of the mural. Then she realized JACKSON ran across the entire top. And finally she saw POLLOCK below that," the Telegraph quoted him as saying in the Smithsonian magazine.

"The characters are unorthodox, even ambiguous, and largely hidden. But, she pointed out, it could hardly be random coincidence to find just those letters in that sequence.

"I was flabbergasted. It's not every day that you see something new in one of the 20th century's most important artworks," he added.

Adams said that his theory got a mixed response from other Pollock experts, and the truth will only be revealed after submitting the painting to X-ray scans.

While the artist is known for his chaotic "splashed paint" style, he often based his work around a single figure or shape, which lends credibility to the historian's hunch.

Mural, which was commissioned by the art collector Peggy Guggenheim and is now owned by the University of Iowa, is apparently worth around 88 million pounds. (ANI)