Continuing her active involvement in artistic, political, and professional causes, Krasner joined the American Abstract Artists, showed her paintings in the group's exhibitions, and rapidly gained credence as a younger-generation modernist. Intense, serious, and ambitious, she prided herself on knowing all the notable members of the city's minuscule avant-garde, so when she was invited to participate in an important group exhibition, "French and American Painting," she was surprised that the name of one fellow exhibitor, Jackson Pollock, was unfamiliar to her. Impulsively, she arrived at his studio unannounced, introduced herself and asked to see his work. As she later recalled, she was amazed by the creative vigor and emotional intensity his paintings embodied, as well as what she sensed was his latent genius. "How could there be a painter like that that I didn't know about?" she wondered. Their meeting in late 1941 proved to be decisive for both artists, resulting in a romantic attachment that would lead to their marriage four years later and a mutually enriching professional relationship.

During their early years together, Krasner underwent a profound reappraisal of her artistic direction; she struggled, in her words, to "lose Cubism" and "absorb Pollock." Nevertheless, although she acknowledged Pollock's superior gifts, she did not become his follower. More than three years his senior, she was a mature artist when they met and throughout her aesthetic evolution retained elements of her early analytical skills and structural sophistication. Moreover, she never lost her deep admiration for Matisse, an artist who interested Pollock only marginally, and for Mondrian, whose grid remained as an underpinning for many of her all-over compositions, notably her "Little Image" series and rectangle abstractions of 1946-51. Matisse in particular was a life-long source of inspiration for her. Yet the intuitive nature of Pollock's approach helped free Krasner's art from formalist strictures, while her discerning eye and keen judgement--as well as her single-minded dedication to promoting his career--proved invaluable to his success.



Jackson Pollock & Lee Krasner c1949
Photo: Lawrence Larkin

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