Lee Krasner

 

What Beast Must I Adore, 1961

oil on canvas

75 x 51.125 in. (190.5 x 129.8 cm)

Gift of the Gordon F. Hampton Foundation, through Wesley K. Hampton, Roger K. Hampton, and Katharine H. Shenk

© 2007 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Reproduction, including downloading of Krasner works is prohibited by copyright lawas and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

 

Lee Krasner (American 1908–1984)

Lee Krasner was born Lenore Krassner in 1908 and was the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants. She studied at Arts Student League, and the National Academy of Design, New York. After graduating she began to take courses toward a teaching certificate and worked as a waitress, but it was in 1934 under the New Deal that Krasner was able to work as an artist full time in WPA’s federal art project until 1943. It was during this period that Krasner began to attend classes again under the direction of Hans Hoffman until 1940. It was here that Krasner transitioned from a more figurative and illustrative aesthetic to more abstract cubist compositions.

In 1941 Krasner participated in a group show titled, French and American Painting along with her future husband Jackson Pollock. Krasner was not familiar with his work, and was intrigued by both the art and its artist. Throughout the turbulent relationship Krasner was a strong supporter and driving force behind Pollock’s work. As a result, for most of her career Krasner was known as the “wife of” Pollock, who was also an artist. Yet, when Krasner married Pollock, she was already in fact further along in her maturity as an artist, and although she managed much of his career, she maintained her own individuality in her work and artistic vision.

Both Pollock and Krasner moved home to The Springs near East Hampton, New York where she took a studio in a small bedroom. Krasner began to produce her collage series, where she often reworked many of her previous works, incorporating familiar forms and colors used in her early paintings and drawings. Although Pollock at this time was experiencing much professional success, during the previous ten years Krasner was only included in two solo and group exhibitions. It was a 1955 exhibition of her collages, that brought back attention to Krasner in the New York art world.

During the late 1950’s to 1960’s Krasner produced some of her most recognizable works. Using natural organic forms to explore the life cycle, Krasner presents contradictory images that suggest both birth and death. Titled Earth Green and Night Journey, these series are seen to reflect a period of distress in her personal life. Pollock’s alcoholism and adultery had caused great marital strain, and in August of 1956 he was killed in a car accident. In the following years Krasner had stints of poor health after suffering a near fatal brain aneurysm in 1962, causing a significant interruption in her art production.

In her later years Krasner divided her time between The Springs and Manhattan and continued to combine both the natural elements of the Earth Green series, her collages, and even drawings from her studies with Hans Hofmann to produce her late works of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Her work gained major recognition in 1965 with exhibitions at White Chapel Gallery, London, and the Whitney Museum, New York in 1975. In the year before her death in 1984, Krasner received her first large scale traveling American retrospective at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Phoenix Museum, and ultimately closing in 1984 shortly after her death, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where her art is still on display.