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Lenore “Lee” Krasner (1908­­–1984) was an American Abstract Expressionist painter who developed an artistic style that connected early-twentieth-century styles with American post-war artistic ideas. With formal training in the academic arts in her early years and her subsequent study in modern styles following the opening of the Museum of Modern Art, Krasner expressed her experiences and struggles through many artistic styles over the course of her career. Krasner’s surviving body of work, however, is small. As a result of her self-criticality, she destroyed many of her own works throughout her career.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Krasner attended the Washington Irving High School for Girls as an adolescent because they offered an art major. She went on to study at the Women’s Art School of Cooper Union, obtaining a teaching certificate in art. From 1928 to 1932, she studied further at the National Academy of Design. Her education gave her the ability to accurately illustrate human anatomy and perform the techniques employed by the so-called ‘Old Masters’.

Krasner became highly critical of the established artistic styles taught by the academy after the Museum of Modern Art opened. She began studying modern art and was particularly influenced by the ideas of Post-Impressionism and the classes she took with Hans Hofmann. While studying under Hofmann, Krasner worked in a neo-Cubist style through still life and live-model drawings/paintings. Her colour palette showed an obvious interest in Fauvism, while the segmented abstraction of her forms created a tension found in Cubist art.

During the Great Depression, Krasner joined the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project in the murals division. She was dissatisfied working for the Project as she was relegated to recreating figurative drawings instead of being allowed to indulge in the more abstract style she had come to develop. At the beginning of the Second World War, the Works Progress Administration became the War Services, and Krasner continued her employment with them by creating collages as war propaganda. Eventually, she quit her job, and in 1940, she joined the American Abstract Artists group.

In 1942, Krasner started shifting away from the neo-Cubist style to a more abstract style after seeing Jackson Pollock’s work for the first time. Only one of the works she created during this transition period survives. The decades that followed saw the artist experimenting with new techniques and colours to develop various new styles and periods in her body of work that were heavily influenced by her life and experiences. In the 1960s and 70s, Krasner drew inspiration from Postmodernism and criticized the notion of art as a tool for communication.

In 1945, Krasner married American artist Jackson Pollock. Although Krasner and Pollock influenced each other’s styles, Krasner was often identified as Pollock’s wife instead of being given equal measure by critics. She struggled with this association and with her identity as a female artist, even through the rise of feminism in the 1960s.

Many major institutions have collected and displayed her works, and she was one of the few woman artists to have a major retrospective exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art.