The young woman wants to stand away both from cubism and from the use of geometry in abstract art. Thus in opposition to the teaching of Hofmann, she appreciates that a gestural art can better express the feelings. She watches a work by Jackson Pollock in 1942. Nobody knows who he is. She knocks on his door. They will marry in 1945.
Their move to a barn in Long Island is desired by Lee. She wants that Jackson departs from New York for a return to nature that will be beneficial to his art. Lee's energy and Jackson's torments give birth to the action painting. The emotion is not created by the figurative but by a furious hand movement in regular patterns that have no frame.
The genius of Jackson met her expectations. The history of art retained Pollock and neglected Krasner.
She has not stopped painting but she did not comment her art, considering that only its achievement was important. She often destroyed her own works. I forward the hypothesis that the art of Lee pushed up to its annihilation influenced the masking of the original drawing by the dripping in the totally innovative style developed by Jackson in their barn.
Lee went beyond Jackson in the variety of the expression of feelings. as she covers the range of their mood changes. Unsustainable events like the death of Pollock or the Holocaust generate a real anger to Krasner. Lee's art is finally more human than Jackson's.
On November 10 in New York, Christie's sells Night Birds, a large oil on canvas 182 x 363 cm painted in 1962, lot 66B estimated $ 2.5M.
At that time, Lee suffers from chronic insomnia and works at night. Her fancies are spreading as a repetitive and endless pattern on a black background. The title invites to interpret the picture as a grouped flight of figures, some of which seeming winged.
SOLD for $ 1.92M including premium