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Lee Krasner's paintings
have their roots in the Abstract Expressionist aesthetic. She was a
close friend of the main representatives of the movement - Willem de
Kooning, Ashile Gorky, Franz Kline, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko,
Clyfford Still, and Jackson Pollock - and exhibited with them from the
1940's onwards.
In 1945 she became Pollock's wife.
Influenced by Hans Hofmann, whose school in New York she attended from
1935 to 1940, but even more by way of Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian,
Krasner developed an increasingly abstract idiom based on organic and
arabesque-like forms.
In contrast to her problematic husband, she showed no reluctance to
include references to landscape or figures, in the all-over pattern of
calligraphic networks and color flecks that filled her canvases.
Krasner gave top priority to the integrity and unity of the picture
plane, to which a haptic factor was added by means of shapes cut out
of paper, affixed to the canvas and painted over. Another key emphasis
was on sensuous color.
A person of immense strength and resilience, Krasner managed to gain
respect as a key member of the Abstract Expressionist movement, too.
Even though she was a woman in what was a fiercely macho culture.
Defined by a kind of brute, gestural physicality, Abstract
Expressionism was dominated by men. Kransner's style which changed
enormously throughout her career, incorporated finally the influence
of Gorky, Matisse and de Kooning.
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