Lee Krasner

Lee Krasner was a famous painter.

She lived in New York.

Lee loved to make art. She went to many art schools. She even studied how to draw people.

She used many different styles. Sometimes she used bright colors. Other times she used shapes.

Lee often changed her work. She would cut up her paintings to make new ones. This is called collage.

Her art shows her feelings. People still love to see her work today.

Lee Krasner was a famous American painter.

She lived and worked in New York City. Lee loved to make art from a young age. She went to many art schools to learn. She studied how to draw the human body. She also learned how to use color and shape.

Lee did not want to make the same art forever. She liked to try new ways to paint. Sometimes she used bright colors. Other times she used dark colors. She even made collage paintings. This means she would cut up her old drawings to make new art.

Her work is called Abstract Expressionism. This is a style that shows deep feelings. She used strong marks and textures in her art. Some of her paintings are very large. They might have hard lines or bright colors. Many people go to museums to see her work today. Her life and art helped change the world of painting.

Lee Krasner was a famous American painter who lived in New York.

She was born in Brooklyn in 1908 to Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants. Her parents moved to the United States to escape war and unfair treatment. Lee loved making art from the time she was a teenager. She studied at the Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. She even learned how to draw the human body very well. One of her early paintings was a self-portrait from 1930. It is now kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many of her other early works were lost in a fire. This makes the pieces we still have very special to see.

Krasner learned many different ways to create art. In 1937, she studied with a teacher named Hans Hofmann. He taught her how to use color to create a sense of space. She also learned a style called Cubism. This style uses shapes to show different parts of a person or object.

She often made charcoal drawings of people. She also made colorful studies using oil paint on paper. She liked to use bright colors against white backgrounds. This helped her explore new ways to look at the world.

During the Great Depression, Krasner worked for the government to make art. She joined the Federal Art Project in 1935. Her job was to help make large murals for public buildings. She also made art to help people during the war years. These were called war propaganda artworks. She even made collages that were shown in many department stores. This work helped her meet many other famous painters. She became part of a group called the American Abstract Artists in 1940. This group helped her connect with artists like Mark Rothko. These connections were very important for her career.

Krasner is known as an Abstract Expressionist. This means her art shows deep feelings through shapes and marks. She did not like to stick to just one style. Instead, she changed her work many times throughout her life. Sometimes her paintings had hard edges and bright colors. Other times, they were more flowing and textured.

She even made collage paintings by cutting up her own old drawings. This allowed her to turn old ideas into brand new art. Her work is full of rhythm and energy.

Lee Krasner's life was connected to the famous painter Jackson Pollock. They married in 1945, but their marriage had many hard times. After he died in 1956, she had to manage his art estate. She continued to grow as an artist in her later years. She received many honors, including a doctorate from Stony Brook University.

Today, people visit the Pollock-Krasner House in Springs, New York. There is also a foundation that helps new artists. Her art is still shown in big museums around the world. She is remembered as a very brave and talented artist.

Lee Krasner was a significant American painter and visual artist.

She was a leading figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement. This movement focused on expressive, gestural, and abstract works. Krasner was primarily active in the New York art scene. Her career was defined by constant change and deep personal expression. She refused to settle into a single, unchanging artistic style. Instead, she embraced different moods, textures, and compositions throughout her life. This willingness to evolve made her a unique force in modern art.

Krasner's artistic development followed a path of rigorous technical training. She began her studies at the Women's Art School of Cooper Union on a scholarship. Later, she attended the National Academy of Design from 1928 to 1932. These schools taught her the techniques of the Old Masters. She became highly skilled at portraying anatomically correct human figures. In 1937, she enrolled in classes taught by Hans Hofmann. Hofmann taught her to use the two-dimensional picture plane effectively. He showed her how to use color to create a spatial illusion. This was not meant to represent reality, but to create depth through color.

Her work moved through several distinct artistic stages and styles. During her studies with Hofmann, she practiced neo-cubism, a modern version of Cubism. In this style, she used the fragmentation of forms to create tension. She often made charcoal drawings of human models. She also created oil on paper color studies of still life settings. Later, she explored fauvism by using bright pigments on white backgrounds. In the 1940s, she created what she called "grey slab paintings." These were works she labored over for months by overpainting or scraping the canvas. Eventually, her later years featured large horizontal paintings with hard-edge lines and bright colors.

Krasner's early career was shaped by the economic and social realities of her time. During the Great Depression, she joined the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project in 1935. She worked in the mural division as an assistant to Max Spivak. Her task was to enlarge designs for large public murals. However, she was dissatisfied with the figurative images required for these public works. When the WPA became War Services, she created war propaganda artworks. This included collages displayed in nineteen department stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

These professional roles helped her build a massive network of fellow artists.

Her life and career were deeply intertwined with the artist Jackson Pollock. They married in 1945, a period when Krasner was already an established figure. Their marriage faced significant challenges due to Pollock's alcoholism and infidelity. In 1956, Pollock died in a drunk-driving incident. This event had a lasting emotional impact on Krasner. Following his death, she became the executor of his estate. She managed his work during the peak of his fame.

Despite these personal struggles, she continued to push her own artistic boundaries.

Krasner's output was characterized by a highly critical and transformative process. She often cut apart her own drawings and paintings to create collage paintings. She frequently revised or completely destroyed entire series of her own work. Because of this habit, her surviving body of work is relatively small. A catalogue raisonné published in 1995 lists 599 known pieces.

Her style often alternated between classic structure and baroque action. She moved between open forms and hard-edge shapes. She also shifted between bright color palettes and monochrome tones. This constant movement is what many critics find most remarkable about her.

Today, Krasner's legacy is preserved through several important institutions. The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, New York, protects her history.

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was also established to support new artists and art scholarship. This foundation helps researchers study American art history. Critic Robert Hughes once called her "the Mother Courage of Abstract Expressionism." Her work has been honored with many awards, including an honorary doctorate from Stony Brook University. A major posthumous retrospective was even held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.