Lee Krasner BARBICAN GALLERY, LONDON July 2019

LEE KRASNER  (1908-1984) AT BARBICAN  JULY 2019

Beautiful set up and arrangement of her work, this was a fascinating exhibition showing the development and achievements of a major American painter, who also happened to be the wife of Jackson Pollock.

It is clear that she was highly motivated from the very start

Life drawing

First with academic teacher Job Goodman

Then won scholarship to Hans Hofmann School   “push-pull”  flatness and three-dimensionality    Krasner started to move into abstraction

War Service Windows     20 department store windows promoting PWAP projects

She attended some of the courses and created collages of her photos blended with her own work.

1945 Little images    Detailed abstractions full of intense life and detail

Mosaic wagon wheels  1947  exhibited successfully

1955 Stable Gallery exhibition

1951 Betty Parsons Gallery had shown her  Geometric abstractions – no sales

In her depression she created series of black and white drawings but then ripped them up

These were layered over the B Parsons paintings as collages and then exhibited at Stable Gallery to great acclaim.

1956 Prophecy   After the death of Pollock large abstractions with reference to body and figure (I think)

1957 Night Journeys

Working at night in Pollock’s old studio using just umber because she did’nt like using colour in electric light

1969   The stained hand made paper  (images and description to come)

1970s Palingenesis   Hard edged colour and abstraction

1974  Eleven Ways    Collaging the abstract life drawings done years earlier

My personal view

I loved this exhibition for its story and the beautiful presentation.

To see how Krasner progressed from working in the classical mode to abstraction in her figure drawings, and then in the little paintings was fascinating. The Little Images and the Stable Gallery pieces I also really loved.  They were such strong images and the colours and shapes so tight and right. The Little Images appear to be her breakthrough into abstract painting after years of “grey slabs” if I recall the interview properly.

Prophecy I appreciated because of its distortion of the figure   Yay!!!

I liked the way her thoughts and feelings were described as background to the different series of works, and how she got stuck and then moved through, and was so engaged with the process.

She seemed to be a daunting person, quite abrasive!  Quite hard to watch the interview given at the end of her life.  No longer an attractive glamorous woman, but remaining an intense artist, as was her essence.

I liked the smaller works better than the huge paintings she did after Pollock’s death.  Why?

In her words “You can have giant physical size with no statement on it… and.. you can have a tiny painting which is monumental in scale”

Maybe I could appreciate the earlier stages because closer to my own experience