works by artists traditionally excluded from the mainstream because of gender, race, or ethnicity. Krasner occupied a unique historical position as the only woman among the so-called 'first generation' of Abstract Expressionists. Yet she was hardly unique in being ignored, stifled, and underrated or in giving up much of her own career for the benefit of her artist husband, Jackson Pollock (1912-56), who probably could not have become one of the century's great painters without her support. This exhibition, which runs from October 10, 1999 to January 2, 2000, goes a long way toward changing Krasner's place in art history. But, as with so many American women or African Americans, current attention can only correct the historical balance--it cannot give back to the artist the opportunities she lost or was denied during her lifetime.
She was born Lena Krassner, the daughter of immigrant Orthodox Jews from Russia, in a rural part of Brooklyn. She was rebellious as a girl, articulating her desire to become an artist and frequently changing her name to such glamorous alternatives as "Lenore." She finally settled on the "gender-ambiguous Lee Krasner" in the 1930s ("Lee Krasner" 4). She attended the National Academy of Design, where she acquired "a thorough grounding in traditional art," but Krasner, as a budding intellectual whose friends were chiefly artists and writers on the cutting edge of modernism, "found the perfect modern antidote" to her academic training in the painting classes of the German abstract painter Hans Hofmann (Kingsley 250). By the late 1930s Krasner had her own studio and was, like so many of her friends, employed by the WPA, the federal program that sponsored a variety of artistic endeavors during the Great Depression. In 1941 John Graham included works by Krasner and Pollock in an exhibition and, intrigued by Pollock's innovative work, Krasner sought him out. She introduced Pollock to her friends, many of ...