LEE KRASNER
Nueva York, (USA) 1908 – New York (USA)1984   

Her training as an artist began in 1926 at the Cooper Union’s Women’s Art School (1926-29), where she received her first commissions as an illustrator. She then attended the Art Students League (1928) and the National Academy of Design (1928-32). In 1934 she joined the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), and the following year she was assigned to the murals division, where she remained until 1943. During those early years, in addition to the influence of Cézanne and Matisse, through Arshile Gorky her work was enriched with elements from Miró and settings close to the metaphysical style of De Chirico.

Her enrolment at Hans Hofmann’s school in 1937 introduced her to the languages of abstraction –Analytical Cubism, Neo-Plasticism- and this in turn led her to join the American Abstract Artists group in 1939. However, her first strictly abstract piece, signed in 1940, was directly connected with Picasso. This aesthetics enabled her to take part in the group exhibition French and American Painting in New York in 1942, which led to her relationship with Jackson Pollock. The promotion of his work formed the focus for her own efforts during the war years, with the exception of the propaganda collages she made for the War Services Project. Her long series of Little Images, 1946-53, marked her return to painting, in a style fully integrated into the aesthetic and stylistic standards of Abstract Expressionism. She strengthened these links with various experiments in the early fifties –automatism, large monochrome areas- prior to an extensive phase of producing large collages, beginning in 1953. These works formed the greater part of her first solo exhibition, held at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1955. Pollock’s death drew her towards large, sombre, dramatic pieces, but in the early sixties, after recovering from a serious illness, she returned to her more colourist facet, with which she presented her work in Europe for the first time, at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1965.

During the seventies, historiography placed her in a privileged position in American painting, as was shown by her significant presence in the major exhibition Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years at the Whitney Museum in 1978, a prelude to the retrospective held at the MoMA in 1984, shortly before her death.