Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Good, but not great
A retrospective of Lee Krasner's work over-inflates the significance of her contribution to 20th-century avant-garde painting, says CHRISTINE LINDEY
Self-Portrait, c. 1928 and Desert Moon, 1955

Lee Krasner: Living Colour
Barbican, London

THE CHILD of Russian immigrants to New York, Lee Krasner (1908-84) bucked the traditional expectations of her stultifyingly strict Orthodox Jewish upbringing, by announcing her decision to become an artist at the age of just 14.

Having persuaded her reluctant family, she studied in various prestigious New York art schools intermittently over many years.

Lee Krasner, Polar Stampede, 1960, Doris and Donald Fisher Collection, San Francisco MoMA © The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
(L to R) How many Aunties?, Back Hares Mount, Leeds, 1978; M
Photography / 14 April 2025
14 April 2025

Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds

Tower of Babel, 1982
Culture / 10 April 2025
10 April 2025
This is poetry in paint, spectacular but never spectacle for its own sake, writes JAN WOOLF
Second Cumming - Bella Caledonia 2020, by Lorna Miller
Exhibition review / 21 March 2025
21 March 2025
In an exhibition of the graphic art of Lorna Miller, MATT KERR takes a lungful of the oxygen of dissent
MASTERMIND; (L) Jon Pertwee as Dr Who in Invasion of the Din
Books / 13 March 2025
13 March 2025
JOHN GREEN surveys the remarkable career of screenwriter Malcolm Hulke and the essential part played by his membership of the Communist Party