Lee Krasner

Private Collection (Acquired direclty from the artist)
Christie's, London, June 30, 1981, Lot 227
Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Michael Rea, New York
James Goodman Gallery, New York

Turin, Circolo degli Artisti, Palazzo Granieri, Arte Nuova, May - June 1959
Turin, International Center of Aesthetic Research, (dates unknown)
New York, Robert Miller Gallery, Lee Krasner: Paintings from the Late Fifties, October - November 1982, n.p., illustrated in color
Houston, Museum of Fine Arts; San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Norfolk Chrysler Museum; Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, Lee Krasner: The Education of an Artist, November 1983 - October 1984

Amei Wallach, "Krasner on View: A Rage to Paint," Newsday, November 13, 1983, Pt. II, p. 19, illustrated
Robert Hobbs, Lee Kranser, New York, 1993, fig. 1, p. 6, illustrated in color
Ellen G. Landau, Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1995, cat. no. 336, p. 178, illustrated in color
Exh. Cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Lee Krasner, October 1999 - January 2000, cat. no. 66, p. 145, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition. There are scattered, stable drying cracks and unobtrusive cracking along the pull margins, and a few light areas of drying cracks on the general composition. The canvas appears very lightly yellowed. There is no apparent restoration visible under UV light. Framed in gilt wood.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

When one starts using the unconscious as a source to take off, it doesn't mean that it's an unconscious painting because the consciousness is there. The artist is there. You're aware. The point at which you stop or pick up or make your next move is a conscious move... And I'm not interested in a prior theory when I paint my picture, because I think you get an awful lot of dead painting, not interesting, dead, sterile. Well, that's not very exciting, for heaven's sakes. One wants to discover.

                        - Lee Krasner, 1964

During her life, Lee Krasner kept much of the art world at bay - eschewing both the social camaraderie of places like the Cedar Bar and alienating many of the prominent critics of the time with her notoriously sharp tongue.  This perhaps as much as being Mrs. Jackson Pollock and a 'woman painter' contributed to the lack of study and acclaim given to Krasner during her lifetime.  It was never doubted that she was a ferociously talented painter, formally trained and deeply knowledgeable about modernism.  However, Krasner was for too long lost in the shadows of her celebrated husband and the other 'Irascibles' of the so-called first generation of Abstract Expressionists.  Today, Lee Krasner is increasingly being recognized for her pioneering role in the New York School and as her work and life are rexamined, a new appreciation for her enormous talents has emerged afresh.  Due to her penchant of destroying works that did not meet the approval of her own critical eye, Krasner's existing body of work is quite small.

Lee Krasner's early formal training included studies at many of New York's finest institutions including Cooper Union, the Art Student's League, National Academy of Design and in 1937, Hans Hofmann's School of Fine Art.  Krasner's early work is highly influenced by Cubism and Picasso.  She was intimately aware of art history as well as the burgeoning art scene in New York City and early on acquainted herself with such luminary figures as Mondrian (who complimented her on her 'strong inner rhythm'), Barnett Newman, de Kooning, Kline, Gorky and John Graham - through whom she would come to meet Jackson Pollock.  Pierre Matisse had long been one of Krasner's largest influences.  The second was Pollock.  Upon seeing his work for the first time, Krasner exclaimed: "I was overwhelmed, bowled over, that's all.  I saw all these marvelous paintings.  I felt as if the floor was sinking." (Ellen G. Landau, Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonne, New York, 1995, p.306)

Krasner's oeuvre would be largely influenced by Pollock's bold new style of painting and the dialogue that existed between the two artists.  Where Hofmann had taught her to paint from nature, Pollock (who once declared to Hofmann 'I am Nature') would teach her to stand in a studio in front of a blank canvas and create from within.  Her work when viewed as whole is highly varied, marked by strong shifts in direction, crucial breaking points at which she turns in entirely new directions.  One such break occurred in 1956, when she received a call in Europe that Pollock had died.

In 1956, after Pollock's gruesome death, Krasner experienced a voracious outpouring of emotional creativity.  The strength of her artistic achievements in the years following this crucial juncture led to an evolution of both her compositional style and application technique. Shifts in her work had begin to appear before Pollock's death, though certainly the raw emotions suffered by Krasner in the aftermath greatly contributed to the added intensity of her new direction.  Moving more firmly away from the Cubist style of her earliest works, Krasner now fully embraced the automatism of action painting.  The large scale works painted in the late 50s employ grand gestural brushwork and amorphous forms set within a still highly constructed composition.  "Paint runs, drips, spreads, invading adjacent forms, indicating a speed of execution and a willingness to relinquish absolute control new in Krasner's work.  For if Pollock's problem was to wrest order from chaos, Krasner's was to learn that she could use her rage without losing her control." (Exh. Cat., Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective, 1983, p.107)

Spring Memory of 1959 is a beautiful example of this rebirth in Krasner's work.  Painted three years after Pollock's death, Spring Memory continues the strain of thought that had their origins in 1956.  The larger canvas size, the use of flesh-toned colors, calligraphic black lines and powerful utilization of scattered areas of raw canvas characterize the general themes of this body of work, so wonderfully displayed in Spring Memory.  The floating disembodied eyes, a motif that first appeared in Krasner's major 1956 painting Prophecy, completed shortly before she departed on her European trip, here appears in a more ambiguous, yet still highly omnipresent way.  As the title suggests, Spring Memory is a living, breathing canvas, wholly alive and celebratory of life.  The areas of exposed canvas lend a feeling of openness, airiness to the canvas, allowing it to breath; the use of flesh tones speaks of life and rebirth; a lyrical sense of rhythm is expressed through the cascading black lines, a grand fluidity of motion.   

In his introduction to the 1958 Martha Jackson Gallery exhibition, B.H. Friedman eloquently captures the aura of works such as Spring Memory, in the following statement:  "In looking at these paintings, listening to them, feeling them, I know that this work - Lee Krasner's most mature and personal, as well as most joyous and positive, to date - was done entirely in the last year and a half, a period of profound sorrow for the artist.  The paintings are a stunning affirmation of life." (Exh. Cat., London, Whitechapel Gallery, Lee Krasner: Paintings, Drawings and Collages, 1965, p.13)