Lee Krasner

A pioneer of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Krasner was renowned for her bold compositions and a lifetime of devotion to artistic innovation. Born Lena Krassner in 1908 in Brooklyn, Krasner showed early talent and a fierce commitment to becoming an artist, enrolling in art school at just 13 and going on to study at prestigious institutions including the Women’s Art School at Cooper Union and later at the National Academy of Design, where her rigorous training in drawing and composition would form the technical foundation for her later abstract work.

In an effort to be taken seriously by the patriarchal art world, Krasner adopted the androgynous name Lee in the early 1930s. During this period, she became an integral part of the New York art scene, joining the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project and founding the American Abstract Artists group in 1936, which enable her to be one of the few women of her time to establish a significant presence in the male-dominated world of Abstract Expressionism.

After marrying Jackson Pollock in 1945, Krasner provided an important link between him and New York’s artistic community and played a crucial role in advancing his career. Yet, as Pollock’s fame grew, her own work was frequently eclipsed by his mythic reputation. Nevertheless, Krasner’s work remained distinct, characterised by dynamic brushwork, rhythmic structures and a deep sensitivity to colour and form.

Krasner’s practice evolved dramatically after Pollock’s death in 1956. She moved into his barn studio which afforded her the space and freedom to create her most powerful large-scale works with renewed energy and raw, intense emotion. Throughout her career, she continuously reinvented her style, shifting between collage, gesture painting and, of course, total abstraction.

Throughout her life, Krasner remained committed to reinvention. She continuously experimented with new media and techniques, moving between painting, collage, drawing and craft. In the 1950s, she created her celebrated collage paintings, made from torn fragments of her own earlier works, which she reassembled into vibrant new compositions in a process that symbolised her regeneration and self-discovery. Her relentless experimentation made her one of the few Abstract Expressionists whose career spanned multiple stylistic evolutions.

In consequence of championing Pollock’s work instead of her own, Krasner only began receiving recognition in her later years. In 1965, she had her first solo exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery in London and, in 1975, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1984, just months after her death, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a major retrospective of her work, cementing her status as a central figure in 20th-century art. Today, Krasner is celebrated as a central figure in the history of Modern art and as a relentless innovator whose vision helped reshape the boundaries of Abstraction and Abstract Expressionism.