Lenore Krassner was born October 27, 1908 in New York City to immigrants from Odessa. Lee Krasner's parents were hard working immigrants. As Jewish immigrant small-business owners in NYC,they set an example of hard work and dedication for their children.
Lee was accepted into art school, not an easy task for a woman in the early 1900s in the USA. She attended Cooper Union and and National Academy of Design, a place where she also taught. Graduating in the midst of the Depression, Krasner worked a series of odd jobs before acquiring a job with the Works Projects Administration’s (WPA) Federal Art Project in 1934. The project employed artists to teach art, illustrate textbooks, and create paintings, sculpture, mosaics, and stained glass decorations for public buildings. Krasner held various positions for the project, from illustrating a marine biology textbook to executing murals for public buildings.
In the 1930s her style moved more toward abstraction. In the 1940's she started exhibiting with American Abstract Artists group. Her first exhibition season culminated in an invitation from John Graham to participate in “American and French Paintings” at the McMillen Gallery in New York. The exhibit proved a watershed for both the art world and for Krasner’s personal world. For the first time in art history, such American “unknowns” as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Lee Krasner hung beside European masters. At this event, she also met her future husband, Jackson Pollock.
The girl born Lonore Krassner became the woman Lee Krasner. The first of her family born in the USA as well as an American Pioneer of Abstract Art.
For more information...visit the Pollock/Krasner House
UP NEXT-Jackson Pollock...her husband...a Kinetic artist who drank a bit too much...
BONUS...What is WPA Art? How did it start? Who was involved?
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