Art of the Day!

Wife of Jackson Pollack, Lee Krasner became an influential abstract artist in the late 20th century. Born of Russian Jewish parents, Krasner studied at The Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design and was a student of Hans Hofmann. Krasner was known to cut up her paintings and revise them into new series of collages making her remaining arts very few. She was also known to sign her paintings and drawings as "L.K." to not have critics look at her as a woman or Pollack's wife but as a great artist.

Six months after her death, the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in NYC held a retrospective of her work. In their review of the exhibition, the New York Times said that it "clearly defines Krasner's place in the New York School" and that she "is a major, independent artist of the pioneer Abstract Expressionist generation, whose stirring work ranks high among that produced here in the last half-century."

Beginning in 1940 she exhibited with the American Abstract Arts group; her first solo show was in New York at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1951. In the 1950s, Krasner produced large-scale gestural works and collages of cut and reworked earlier canvases. Twenty years later, she made collages from cut-up drawings done in her days as Hofmann's student.

            Pollinations, painted in 1968, has curves the lines that eminate a sense of feeling that could only be felt in Krasner's work. The movement of each brushstroke is a movement of her body of her heart as she moved the brush across the canvas and lifted it, leaving some drips upon the canvas.
           Untitled, painted in 1949, is one of Krasner's early works. The feel of a collage as each cube is its own with different shapes and lines to create the masterpiece that it is.

Within Krasner's paintings, you can feel the energy and power behind the brushstrokes she applies to her paintings. The two paintings posted show how Krasner, along with her husband, were astonishing artist that embodied the Abstract Expressionsim movement.

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