In this biography
Quick facts
- Born
- 1908
- Died
- 1984
- Birthplace
- Brooklyn, New York, United States
- Country
- United States
- Nationality
- Not independently established
- Known for
- Abstraction, collage and revision
Why this life matters
She developed abstraction through repeated revision, using drawing, painting and collage across a career larger than her role in Pollock’s legacy.
Timeline
Key moments
Hofmann study
Developed her abstract practice.
Collage exhibition
Stable Gallery, New York.
Retrospective
Whitechapel Gallery, London.
Old drawings, new work
A return to collage.
Training and public work
Lee Krasner was born in Brooklyn in 1908 and trained at Cooper Union, the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. During the Depression she worked on public art projects, including the WPA’s mural programme. Study with Hans Hofmann and participation in American Abstract Artists placed her within a developing abstract-art community.
Her professional life preceded her marriage to Jackson Pollock in 1945. The 1942 exhibition that brought them together included other artists and curatorial decisions; it was not the beginning of her artistic education.
A small studio and dense images
At Springs, on Long Island, Krasner worked in a bedroom studio on the Little Images paintings. Their dense markings were one solution to the possibilities of a small canvas. Collage offered another, incorporating paper and discarded pieces of painted canvas.
The 1955 exhibition of her collages at the Stable Gallery brought renewed attention to her work. Revision was not only a way to repair an unsuccessful picture: materials from previous work could enter a new composition with a different scale and organisation.
Scale, grief and continued change
After Pollock’s death in 1956, Krasner moved into the barn studio he had used. Large paintings such as The Seasons and Gaea extended her work with colour, gesture and nature. A change of working space mattered, but it did not explain every artistic decision that followed.
She continued exhibiting independently, with a Whitechapel retrospective in 1965 and further recognition in the 1970s and early 1980s. Her management of Pollock’s estate formed part of her life alongside a continuing body of work of her own.
Returning to drawings without returning to the past
In 1976 Krasner incorporated figure and still-life drawings from her Hofmann-school years into another collage series. Old exercises could be cut and reorganised rather than preserved as untouchable stages of development.
Imperative (1976), recorded as oil, charcoal and paper on canvas, is one material instance of that practice. Krasner died in 1984. The continuing record of her work makes visible a career of transformations across media, not a steady march toward one final signature style.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions about Lee Krasner
- Did Krasner stop making her own work while managing Pollock’s legacy?
- No. Her paintings, collages and exhibitions continued alongside that responsibility.
Keep exploring
Lives connected to this story
- Helen Frankenthaler
Compare another woman’s changing practice within postwar abstraction.
- Alma Thomas
Explore a separate route into late-career abstract painting.
Sources and further reading
Explore the evidence
These references support the biography and offer further reading. Official records, first-person accounts and independent reporting provide different perspectives; image records document attribution and licensing.
- 1. MoMA artist essayLee Krasner
This biography uses selected written records. Films, performances, scores and archival folders were not viewed or read in full.
- 2. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian InstitutionBiographical note: Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers
- 3. Helen A. Harrison, Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, Stony Brook UniversityLee Krasner
- 4. National Gallery of ArtLee Krasner: Imperative and selected works
- 5. MoMA, 1984 press materialLee Krasner: selected chronology
