Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner is often categorized as part of the New York School of artists who championed abstract expressionism, but she was also a master of self-reappraisal, often discarding whole bodies of work for a new approach. Born to Russian immigrant parents in 1908 in Brooklyn, Krasner was attracted to visual art from an early age. She pursued formal studies, first at Cooper Union in 1926, and then at the National Academy of Design in 1928. She apparently did not suffer fools gladly, and sometimes clashed with her instructors. Krasner found work in Depression-era New York with the Works Projects Administration, assisting Max Spivak. She also enrolled in the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art in 1937, where she delved into European modernist movements such as Cubism. Krasner was ambitious and hard-working, first gaining some recognition in exhibitions with the American Abstract Artists group in the early 1940s. At this time, she met Jackson Pollock and a few years later they married. Krasner began to work in collage in the 1950s, using shredded earlier paintings as her material. In 1956, Pollock died in a car accident and Krasner was thrown into the role of "widow of famous artist". Her Little Image series in the 1960s signaled yet another reinvention. A retrospective of her work was assembled in 1965 at Whitechapel Art Gallery, followed by another in 1973 at the Whitney Museum. Lee Krasner died in 1984. The home and studio she shared with Pollock in East Hampton on Long Island is now a museum open to the public.
