Monday Inspiration: Lee Krasner



Lee Krasner, Thaw, 1966, oil on canvas, (Source)



Lee Krasner, Gaea, 1966 (source)

Lee Krasner was part of the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York- one of the only females that were part of that particular movement, along with Helen Frankenthaler. She is perhaps best known for her husband though- Jackson Pollack, his own fame and lifestyle no doubt overshadowed her work, and after his death she managed his estate, which would have been a daunting task. I think her works are a beautiful mixture of soft and hard - the colours are feminine but the black lines that surround her work (and reappear in her works) lend their strength to the soft colours.

The shapes themselves are repetitive curves and rounds, very soft even when she's depicting landscapes and high rises- in Gaea the shapes seem strongly symbolic of breasts and mouths, it's an interesting juxtaposition, and this abstraction of the female form  when done by a female artist has a different effect than when done by a male artist, while the segmentation of the female form in De Kooning's Woman  I  makes her seem overwhelming and foreign, in Krasners work the symbols seem to be a reflection.