Lenore "Lee" Krasner (born Lena Krassner; October 27, 1908 – June 19, 1984) was an American painter and visual artist active primarily in New York whose work has been associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement.

By the 1940s, Krasner was an established figure among the American abstract artists of the New York School,[1] with a network including painters such as Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.

Their life was marred by Pollock's infidelity and alcoholism, while his untimely death in a drunk-driving incident in 1956 had a deep emotional impact on Krasner.

In her later years, she received broader artistic and commercial recognition and shifted toward large horizontal paintings marked by hard-edge lines and bright contrasting colors.

Following Krasner's death in 1984, critic Robert Hughes described her as "the Mother Courage of Abstract Expressionism" and a posthumous retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

[5] She was the daughter of Chane (née Weiss) and Joseph Krasner,[6] Russian-Jewish immigrants from Spykov (now Shpykiv, a Jewish community in what is now Ukraine).

Krasner's parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants who fled to the United States to escape antisemitism and the Russo-Japanese War,[7] and Chane changed her name to Anna once she arrived.

[11] By attending a technical art school, Krasner was able to gain an extensive and thorough artistic education as illustrated through her knowledge of the techniques of the Old Masters.

She submitted it to the National Academy in order to enroll in a certain class, but the judges could not believe that the young artist produced a self-portrait en plein air.

[17] She typically illustrated female nudes in a cubist manner with tension achieved through the fragmentation of forms and the opposition of light and dark colors.

Murals were created to be easily understood and appreciated by the general public; however, the abstract art Krasner produced did not meet this need.

[25] She met future abstract expressionists Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, and Bradley Walker Tomlin through this organization.

[28] Krasner's style often alternates between classic structure and baroque action, open form and hard-edge shape, and bright color and monochrome palette.

Throughout her career, she refused to adopt a singular, recognizable style and instead embraced change through varying the mood, subject matter, texture, materials, and compositions of her work often.

[28] She was often reluctant to discuss the iconography of her work and instead emphasized the importance of her biography since she claimed her art was formed through her individual personality and her emotional state.

[27] Krasner's extensive knowledge of cubism was the source of her creative problem since she needed her work to be more expressive and gestural to be considered contemporary and relevant.

[54] She explored contrasts of light and dark colors, hard and soft lines, organic and geometric shapes, and structure and improvisation through this work.

[51] These works were first exhibited by Eleanor Ward at the Stable Gallery in 1955 in New York City, but they received little public acclaim apart from a good review from Clement Greenberg.

While she started making this work before Pollock's death, they are considered to reflect her feelings of anger, guilt, pain, and loss she experienced about their relationship before and after he died.

According to the American art historian Barbara Rose, working on the collage maquettes in preparation for the murals provided Krasner "with a means of translating her winged, floral, and organic forms into monumental abstractions on a public scale".

Since she was working during the night, she had to paint with artificial light rather than daylight, causing her palette to shift from bright, vibrant hues to dull, monochrome colors.

[75] Since he served as such a large figure in the abstract expressionist movement, it is still often difficult for scholars to discuss her work without mentioning Pollock in some capacity.

[80] Starting in 1970, Krasner began making large horizontal paintings made up of hard-edge lines and a palette of a few bright colors that contrasted one another.

In this work, the black and gray shapes of the figure studies are juxtaposed against the blank canvas or the addition of brightly colored paint.

[83] All of the collages' titles from this series are different verb tenses interpreted as a critique of Greenberg's and Michael Fried's insistence on the presentness of modern art.

[86] Throughout her career, Krasner went through periods of struggle where she would experiment with new styles that would satisfy her means for expression and harshly critique, revise, or destroy the work she would produce.

Since Krasner had learned from Hans Hofmann while Pollock received training from Thomas Hart Benton, each took different approaches to their work.

Additionally, Krasner was responsible for introducing Pollock to many artists, collectors, and critics who appreciated abstract art such as Willem de Kooning, Peggy Guggenheim, and Clement Greenberg.

Lee Krasner (Mrs. Jackson Pollock) takes her husband's paint and enamels and changes his unrestrained, sweeping lines into neat little squares and triangles.

The Foundation functions as the official estate for both Krasner and Pollock, and also, under the terms of her will, serves "to assist individual working artists of merit with financial need.