FEATURED ARTIST -  December 2008

Lee Krasner (1908 - 1984)

From 1937 until 1940 Krasner attended classes at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts, New York. Hofmann taught the principles of cubism, and his influence helped to direct Krasner's work toward neo-cubist abstraction. When commenting on her work, Hofmann stated, "This is so good you would not know it was painted by a woman." Krasner joined the American Abstract Artists group in 1940 and exhibited for the first time in their fourth annual exhibition in New York that year. In 1942 she participated in the group exhibition 'American and French Paintings', selected by John Graham for the McMillen Gallery, New York. Jackson Pollock also participated in this exhibition and he and Krasner became constant companions after the show; they were married in 1945.

Night Creatures		Cool White

Krasner would often cut apart her own drawings and paintings to create collages and sometimes revised or discarded whole series. As a result, her surviving body of work is relatively small. Her catalogue raisonné, published in 1995 by Abrams, lists only 599 known pieces. She was rigorously self-critical, and her critical eye is believed to have been important to Pollock's work.

Free Space	Embrace	Black, White and Pink Collage

Comrades in art, Pollock and Krasner fought the battle for legitimacy, impulsiveness and individual expression in a old-fashioned, conformist and repressed culture unreceptive to these values and put off by the intricacy and hassle of Modernism itself.

Mysteries	Gouache Number 5, 1942

Krasner's first solo exhibition was at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, in 1951. However, it was not until the mid-1960s that she began to receive proper recognition. A retrospective exhibition was held in 1965 at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, which then toured Britain. In the late 1960s she held a number of solo exhibitions at Marlborough Gallery, New York. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, organised an exhibition of Krasner's larger works in 1973, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, mounted a retrospective of her drawings and collages in 1975. In 1983 the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, organised a large retrospective which travelled to San Francisco, New York and Paris. Krasner died in New York on 27 June 1984, while this exhibition was still touring.

Jungle Green	Milkweed	Shooting Gold

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