LEE KRASNER
An ambitious and important artist in New York City during Abstract Expressionism’s heyday, Lee Krasner’s own career often was compromised by her role as supportive wife to Jackson Pollock, arguably the most significant postwar American painter, as well as by the male-dominated art world. Krasner was intimately involved in the synthesis of abstract form and psychological content, which announced the advent of Abstract Expressionism. Her desire to revise her aesthetic or what she called “breaks,” led to her innovative Little Image Series of the late 1940s, her bold collages of the 1950s, and, later, her large canvases, brilliant with color, of the 1960s. Krasner was “rediscovered” by feminist art historians during the 1970s and lived to see a greater recognition of her art and career, which continues to grow to this day.
“Painting…in which the inner and the outer man are inseparable, transcends technique, transcends subject and moves into the realm of the inevitable,” she said. Krasner studied under Hans Hofmann, and considered Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian to be lifelong influences on her practice.