Back to Parrish Art Museum Site | Login
facebooktwittervimeoflickr
Parrish East End Stories
  • Chronology
  • Artists
  • Map
  • Participate
  • About
  • « Artist Browser
Lee Krasner
1908 - 1984


American
Abstract Expressionism/ New York School
Collage Artists, Painters
Lee Krasner was born in Brooklyn in 1908. Her desire to become a professional artist led her to pursue an education at various academies. Uunder the guidance of such masters as Hans Hofmann, Krasner came to fully appreciate Cubism and other European modernist developments. During the 1930s she worked for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as an artist, teacher, and vocational trainee. She joined American Abstract Artists, exhibited with the group, and gained momentum as an American modernist. Krasner was asked to participate in French and American Painting, a group exhibition organized by the artist John Graham in 1942. Among the lesser-known Americans in the show were Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, who lived a block from Krasner. She visited his studio and compared the impact of his work to an explosion. She introduced him to de Kooning, thereby initiating an infamous and volatile friendship. Not only was Krasner taken by Pollock’s painting, but she began a romantic relationship with him shortly after the exhibition and largely put her work aside in support of him. Later in 1942, she and Pollock were living together and working together for the WPA. Krasner, who was in a supervisory position, arranged for Pollock to work with her. In 1945, she and Pollock shared a summer rental in Springs with fellow artist Reuben Kadish. Krasner thought that the East End would be the perfect retreat, where she and Pollock could concentrate on their art and where Pollock could cut down on his drinking. She persuaded Pollock's dealer and patron, Peggy Guggenheim, to lend them the down payment on a farmhouse in Springs. The two artists married in October 1945, and moved to their new home the following month. Pollock converted the barn to a studio, while Krasner used a small upstairs bedroom in the house for painting. She had her first solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1951 and exhibited three years’ worth of collages at the Stable Gallery in 1955. The following year she abruptly changed direction, returning to a sensuous, painterly style in which human, animal, and plant forms play prominent roles. By the mid-1950s her relationship with Pollock was in ruins—he was drinking heavily, had taken a mistress, and was no longer painting, while Krasner’s work was progressing rapidly. After Pollock was killed in an automobile accident, Krasner continued to paint and achieved some success. She created larger works with a lyrical quality of form and a sensuality in the application of the paint. By the 1960s, Krasner had moved into Pollock’s barn-studio in Springs, and as she worked through the 1970s, she confirmed her position as a seminal American Abstract Expressionist.
Image not available for view
Image not available for view

Image not available for view


slideshow
External Resources
    The Pollock Krasner House
    Archives of American Art Oral History Interview
    Archives of American Art Oral History Interview II
Organizations and Events
  • Art Students League
    (was attended by)
  • American Abstract Artists
    (member)
  • Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project (FAP)
    (is the assistant of)
  • National Academy of Design (NAD)
    (was attended by)
  • 17 Eastern Long Island Artists
    (was included in)
  • Venice Biennale
    (was included in)
  • 10 East Hampton Abstractionists, 1950
    (was included in)
  • The Collection: Abstract Expressionism
    (was included in)
  • Sea Change
    (was included in)
  • "As American As...": 100 Works from the Collection of the Parrish Art Museum
    (was included in)
  • "In Memory of My Feelings": Frank O'Hara and American Art
    (was included in)
  • Recent Acquisitions: Framing the Collection
    (was included in)
  • The Stamp of Impulse: Abstract Expressionist Prints
    (was included in)
  • Esteban Vicente: Portrait of the Artist
    (was included in)
  • The South Fork - Long Island: Its Artists
    (was included in)
  • The Parrish Art Museum 1966 Invitational Exhibition
    (was included in)
  • "The Summer Place": 31 Hamptons Artists
    (was included in)
  • 17 Abstract Artists of East Hampton: The Pollock Years, 1946-56
    (was included in)
  • Flying Tigers: Painting and Sculpture in New York, 1939 - 1946
    (was included in)
  • Curators' Choice
    (was included in)
  • Works of Art on Paper from the Permanent Collection
    (was included in)
  • Drawing on the East End, 1940-1988
    (was included in)
  • Drawing Highlights: Eric Fischl, Roy Lichtenstein, Esteban Vicente, and Selections from the Collection
    (was included in)
  • Esteban Vicente: In the Company of Friends
    (was included in)
  • Poets and Painters
    (was included in)
Social Networks
  • Alfonso Ossorio
    (host)
  • Jackson Pollock
    (spouse)
  • Betty Parsons
    (guest)
  • Charles Pollock
    (guest)
  • Clement Greenberg
    (guest)
  • Hans Namuth
    (guest)
  • Conrad Marca-Relli
    (neighbor)
  • Marisol Escobar
    (friend)
  • John Graham
    (friend)
  • George McNeil
    (friend)
  • Herman Cherry
    (friend)
  • Philip Pavia
    (friend)
  • Stuart Davis
    (friend)
  • Peter Busa
    (friend)
  • Peter Busa
    (classmate)
  • Philip Guston
    (friend)
  • John Jonas Gruen
    (friend)
  • Milton Resnick
    (friend)
  • Mercedes Matter
    (friend)
  • Robert Motherwell
    (friend)
  • Alfonso Ossorio
    (friend)
  • Andre Masson
    (friend)
  • Reuben Kadish
    (host)
  • Robert Motherwell
    (host)
  • James Brooks
    (friend)
  • Charlotte Park
    (friend)
  • Fritz Bultman
    (classmate)
  • Marisol Escobar
    (friend)
  • Roy Lichtenstein
    (friend)
  • Mike Solomon
    (friend)
  • Frank O'Hara
    (friend)
  • Perle Fine
    (friend)
  • Helen Frankenthaler
    (guest)
  • Perle Fine
    (friend)
  • Sheridan Lord
    (friend)
  • Hans Hofmann
    (teacher/ student)
  • Grace Hartigan
    (guest)
  • George McNeil
    (friend)
  • George McNeil
    (classmate)
  • Perle Fine
    (classmate)
  • John Graham
    (associate)
  • Matta [Roberto Antonio Sebastian Matta Echaurren]
    (friend)
  • Paul Jenkins
    (host)
  • Paul Jenkins
    (friend)
  • Athos Zacharias
    (friend)
  • Willem de Kooning
    (exhibited)
  • Elaine Benson Gallery
    (associate)
  • Barnett Newman
    (friend)
  • Joan Mitchell
    (associate)
  • John Little
    (neighbor)
  • Esteban Vicente
    (associate)
  • Jackson Pollock
    (spouse)
  • Harriette Joffe
    (friend)
Artists from same movement
  • Ernest Briggs
  • Michael Goldberg
  • Agnes Martin
  • Melville Price
  • Joe Stefanelli
  • Kenneth Koch
  • David Budd
  • Adolph Gottlieb
  • Matta [Roberto Antonio Sebastian Matta Echaurren]
  • Robert Rauschenberg
  • Hedda Sterne
  • Bill Berkson
  • Fritz Bultman
  • John Graham
  • George McNeil
  • Ad Reinhardt
  • Clyfford Still
  • Mary Callery
  • John Button
  • Grace Hartigan
  • Fred Mitchell
  • Milton Resnick
  • Mark Tobey
  • Harriette Joffe
  • Lawrence Calcagno
  • Stanley William Hayter
  • Joan Mitchell
  • Robert Richenburg
  • Bradley Walker Tomlin
  • Mark Di Suervo
  • Nicolas Carone
  • Carol Hunt
  • Kyle Randolph Morris
  • Larry Rivers
  • Stanley Twardowicz
  • Giorgio Cavallon
  • Paul Jenkins
  • Robert Motherwell
  • James Rosati
  • Jack Tworkov
  • John Chamberlain
  • Buffie Johnson
  • Roy W. Nicholson
  • Frank Roth
  • Irving Ramsey Wiles
  • Dan Christensen
  • Lester Johnson
  • Costantino Nivola
  • Mark Rothko
  • Frank Wimberley
  • Christo Coetzee
  • Matsumi Kanemitsu
  • John Opper
  • Miriam Schapiro
  • Manoucher Yektai
  • Mary Clyde Abbott
  • Elaine de Kooning
  • Franz Kline
  • Alfonso Ossorio
  • Sonja Sekula
  • Adja Yunkers
  • Dennis Ashbaugh
  • Willem de Kooning
  • Lee Krasner
  • Charlotte Park
  • Kimber Smith
  • Wilfrid Zogbaum
  • Alice Baber
  • John Ferren
  • Ibram Lassaw
  • Betty Parsons
  • Sasson Soffer
  • Larry Zox
  • William Baziotes
  • Perle Fine
  • Alfred Leslie
  • Charles Pollock
  • Syd Solomon
  • James Schuyler
  • Norman Bluhm
  • Helen Frankenthaler
  • Vincent Longo
  • Jackson Pollock
  • Giorgio Spaventa
  • Ruth Kligman
  • Ilya Bolotowsky
  • Joseph Glasco
  • Alvin Loving
  • Richard Pousette-Dart
  • Theodoros Stamos
  • Peggy Guggenheim
Places
  • Springs
    (lived in, 1945 - 1984)
  • Springs
    (lived in, 1945 - 1981)
  • Springs
    (had a studio in, 1945 - 1981)
  • East Hampton
    (exhibited at, 1945 - 1981)
  • The Creeks, Georgica Pond, East Hampton
    (visited, 1945 - 1981)
  • Hans Hofmann School | 53rd W 8th
    (attended, 1945 - 1981)
  • Art Students League | 215 W 57th St
    (attended, 1945 - 1981)
  • Amagansett
    (visited, 1945)
  • Huntington
    (visited, circa 1930)
  • Brooklyn
    (was born at, 1908)
Please login/register to share your story about this artist