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Free Space II

Artist / Maker: Lee Krasner, 1908 - 1984
Collection: American Art
Date: 1975
Classification: Mixed Media
Medium: serigraph and collage on paper
Dimensions: Frame: 23 1/4 x 29 3/4 in. (59.1 x 75.6 cm) Paper: 19 1/2 x 26 in. (49.5 x 66 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Jean Crutchfield and Robert Hobbs
Credit Line Reproduction: © 2013 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Rights & Reproductions Information
Object Number: 2008.3.2

Description

Most analyses of early twentieth-century European modernism juxtapose two archrivals: Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. The former, a Fauvist, was renowned for his sensuous use of color and line, while the latter was the foremost Cubist who emphasized form and invented collage. Few subsequent artists have been able to reconcile the competing strategies; two exceptions were Hans Hofmann and his student Lee Krasner. Early in her career, Krasner became enamored with both artists through exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and New York galleries, and through her studies with Hofmann. She was never apologetic about her sources. “He [Pollock] would have influenced me even if I hadn’t married him. So did Picasso and Matisse and Mondrian. But I think I’ve held my own identity right through. … We are all influenced by other artists. Art brings about art.” [1]

Krasner turned to collage making in the early 1950s, and again in the mid-1970s. At first, she tore old canvases and arranged them, enjoying the improvisational aspects of their rough edges. In her second foray with collage, she carefully cut paper with scissors, creating sharp and precise edges reminiscent of Matisse’s late cutouts. The sheets of paper she used were actually charcoal drawings, which she had done under Hofmann’s watchful eye. The idea of tearing these drawings may have come from her instructor, who in his critiques of student work often tore sheets of paper in two.

Free Space, signed and numbered XXIII/L, synthesizes the color of Matisse and the analytical Cubism of Picasso, and exemplifies Hofmann’s “push-pull” theory. It employs the arcing organic shapes so characteristic of Krasner’s work from this period and simultaneously demonstrates her use of collage. The color palette is limited; a bright kelly green of cut paper contrasts with a dull olive green. The serigraph vividly illustrates the interaction of color with the intense green shapes advancing. The interstices between the dominant elements are white, are articulated with dark green scribbles, and in turn create a dialogue between positive and negative shapes.

Free Space was a commission from the Transworld Art Corporation of New York for An American Portrait, consisting of original prints and sculptures by thirty-three international artists. Each portfolio was accompanied by historical writings and poetry designed to celebrate the country’s bicentennial. The aptly titled Free Space serigraphs were in a section that included selections by John Steinbeck, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Reynolda House Museum of American Art owns two prints from the deluxe edition of fifty and in both instances the bright green shapes are collaged. [2]

Much of Krasner’s organic imagery relates to nature in a general way, and may be explained by her experience living in Springs, on Long Island, an area known for its truck farms. In a 1965 statement she prophetically opined, “Painting for me, when it really ‘happens,’ is as miraculous as any natural phenomenon—as say a lettuce leaf. By ‘happens’ I mean the painting in which the inner aspect of man and his outer are inseparable, transcends technique, transcends subject and moves into the realm of the inevitable—then you have the lettuce leaf.” [3]

Notes:
[1] Krasner, interview with Dorothy Holmes, 1972, quoted in Gail Levin, Lee Krasner: A Biography (New York: Harper Collins, 2011), 419.
[2] See Ellen G. LandauLee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonné (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995, 275–277.
[3] Krasner quoted in Bryan Robertson and B.H. Friedman, Lee Krasner: Paintings, Drawings and Collages, exhibition catalogue (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1965), 19, quoted in Jeffrey D. Grove, Lee Krasner After Palingenesis (New York: Robert Miller Gallery, 2003), unpaginated.

Artist Bio

Spouses of highly visible and notorious figures—whether in the arts or politics—face numerous challenges. When both husband and wife are accomplished in the same field, the potential for tension is even greater. Such was the case for Lee Krasner (1908–1984), who was married to the great and tumultuous Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock from 1945 until 1956. A skillful artist before their marriage and in her own right, Krasner also worked hard to promote Pollock’s career during his lifetime and afterward. Although she was the only woman member of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, recognition came to her late, in part due to her gender and also because she was overshadowed by Pollock. She was adamant, however: “As an artist I never thought of myself as anything but LEE KRASNER. I’m always going to be Mrs. Pollock—that’s a matter of fact—but I’ve never used the name Pollock in connection with my work. I painted before Pollock, during Pollock, and after Pollock.” [1]

Krasner was raised in a traditional Orthodox Jewish household in Brooklyn, her birthplace. Declaring an interest in art, Krasner, after two attempts, gained acceptance to Washington Irving High School in Manhattan—the only public school where a girl could study art. From 1926 to 1928, she attended the Women’s Art School of The Cooper Union, followed by a short period at the Art Students League and two years at the National Academy of Design. A determined and often rebellious student, Krasner objected to certain policies, such as one that prevented women from going to the basement, the only place where fish could be studied for still lifes. Living in Greenwich Village with fellow artist Igor Pantuhoff, Krasner supported herself as an artist’s model and waitress and studied to be a teacher, although she never taught.

In early 1934, Krasner began to work for the Public Works of Art Project, and the following year she was assigned to the Mural Division of the Fine Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration. Like many artists during the Depression, she became involved in leftist politics; she saw Picasso’s Guernica at the Valentine Gallery as part of an exhibit to raise funds for Spanish refugees. For her, it was a powerful experience: “It knocked me right out of the room, I circled the block four or five times, and then went back and took another look at it. I’m sure I was not alone in that kind of reaction. … You’re overwhelmed in many directions when you’re congenially confronted with, let’s say, a painting like Guernica for the first time. It disturbs so many elements in one given second, you can’t say ‘I want to paint like that.’ It isn’t that simple.” [2]

In 1937, Krasner became a student of Hans Hofmann, a rigorous instructor who both challenged and encouraged her. She became acquainted with his “push-pull” theory of color—that some colors recede while others advance—and, under his guidance, she embarked on her first abstractions. Later, in the 1950s, she used many of the charcoal drawings of figures and still life from Hofmann’s classes in large-format collages. But most important for Krasner was his admiration of both Picasso and Matisse, an appreciation she would emulate in her work, balancing the cubist form of the former and the color of the latter.

Krasner’s circle of friends and colleagues was expansive, and included such critics as Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg and the painters Arshile Gorky and Willem deKooning. An admirer of Piet Mondrian, she shared with him a passion for jazz and dance, and recalled, “I was a fairly good dancer, that is to say, I can follow easily, but the complexity of Mondrian’s rhythm was not simple in any sense.” [3] She participated and exhibited with the American Abstract Artists, a leftist-leaning organization active in the 1940s, which advocated for the rights of artists. At a 1941 exhibition, she encountered Pollock, and their relationship soon evolved as they worked together on the War Services Project designing posters and displays. In 1945, they married and moved to Springs, a small, rural settlement on eastern Long Island, one hundred miles from Manhattan.

Despite some dry spells and time devoted to assisting Pollock with his career, Krasner continued her own painting, usually developing ideas in series. Her Little Images of the late 1940s are densely packed intimate works in which she clearly reveled in the viscosity of her medium. These were followed by more geometric compositions and a predilection for vertical canvases that have quasi-figurative elements. In the 1950s, she was captivated by collage, often using older, discarded work. She explained “I go back on myself, into my own work, destroy it in some way or reutilize it in some way and come up with a new thing. … I’m constantly going back to something I did earlier, doing something else with it and coming forth with another more clarified image.” [4]

Reflecting her earlier work on murals as well as the large-scale paintings of her contemporaries, Krasner’s canvases were big, but never so large that she had to use a ladder. Her characteristic arcing organic shapes revert to previous drawings of the figure and reveal the broad gestures that she used to apply paint. She understood the sources and cycles of her work: “All my work keeps going like a pendulum; it seems to swing back to something I was involved in earlier, or it moves between horizontality and verticality, circularity, or a composite of them. For me, I suppose that change is the only constant.” [5]

Notes:
[1] Krasner quoted in David Bourdon, “Lee Krasner: I’m Embracing the Past,” Village Voice, March 7, 1977, 57, quoted in Robert Hobbs, Modern Masters: Lee Krasner (New York, Abbeville Press, 1993), 100.
[2] Krasner, interview with Barbara Rose, July 31, 1966, quoted in Gail Levin, Lee Krasner: A Biography (New York: Harper Collins, 2011), 135.
[3] Krasner quoted in Virginia Pitts Rembert, Mondrian in the USA (New York: Parkstone Press, Ltd, 2002), quoted in Levin, Lee Krasner, 181.
[4] Krasner, interview with Barbara Novak, Boston, October 1979, recorded for WBGH New TV workshop, quoted in Jeffrey D. Grove, Lee Krasner After Palingenesis (New York: Robert Miller Gallery, 2003), unpaginated.
[5] Krasner quoted in Marcia Tucker, Lee Krasner: Large Paintings (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1973), quoted in Barbara Rose, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1983), 139.

Published References & Bibliography

Published References:

Bibliography:

Baro, Gene. Lee Krasner: Collages and Works on Paper, 1933–1974. Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1975.

Grove, Jeffrey D. Lee Krasner After Palingenesis. New York: Robert Miller Gallery, 2003.

Hobbs, Robert. Modern Masters: Lee Krasner. New York, Abbeville Press, 1993.

Landau Ellen G. Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonné. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995.

Levin, Gail. Lee Krasner: A Biography. New York: Harper Collins, 2011.

Nemser, Cindy. “A Conversation with Lee Krasner.” Arts Magazine47 (April 1973): 43–48.

Novak, Barbara. Lee Krasner: Recent Work. New York: Pace Gallery, 1981.

Robertson, Bryan, and B.H. Friedman. Lee Krasner: Paintings, Drawings and Collages. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 1965.

Robertson, Bryan, and Robert Hughes. Lee Krasner Collages. New York: Robert Miller Gallery, 1986.

Rose, Barbara. Lee Krasner: A Retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1983.

Tucker, Marcia. Lee Krasner: Large Paintings. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974.

Provenance

To 2008
Robert Hobbs and Jean Crutchfield, Richmond, VA. [1]

From 2008
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Robert Hobbs and Jean Crutchfield in 2008. [2]

Notes:
[1] Accession Record and Deed of Gift, object file.
[2] See note 1.

Exhibition History

Signed, Inscription, Period, Culture

Signed:

Lee Krasner

Inscription:

XXXVIII/L (lower left center, in pencil after signature)

Period:
20th Century
Culture:
American

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Reynolda House Museum of American Art

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Reynolda House is supported by the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. It is affiliated with Wake Forest University and is AAM accredited.

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