Lee Krasner : A Biography

'Of 2019’s many exhibitions showcasing marginalised women artists, standout was the Barbican’s Lee Krasner — known too long primarily as Mrs Jackson Pollock. Like her paintings, Krasner’s life was fraught, dynamic, independent, of absolute integrity: an engrossing, uplifting story of personal and creative survival, against a bright backcloth of mid-century America' - FT

The first full length account of Lee Krasner's colourful life

In Gail Levin's riveting biography, Lee Krasner emerges as a significant artist who richly deserves her place in the 20th century's cultural lexicon. Drawing on new sources and numerous personal interviews - including with Krasner herself - Levin has created a dynamic and moving portrait of a brilliant woman, and in so doing recovers Krasner's voice and allows us to understand how her life intersected with and informed her art.

One of the FT's Best Books of 2019.

Details

• Author: Gail Levin
• Paperback: 220 pages | 102 illustrations
• Date published: May 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN: 978-0500295281
• Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.1 cm

Reviews

'An insightful, sharply drawn portrait of 20th-century America from a vantage point of a creative woman swept up in a realm of remarkable artistic productivity' - Wall Street Journal

'The culmination of decades of scholarship, advocacy and even friendship with Krasner ... empathetic and insightful ... Krasner comes wonderfully alive, especially in her own words, in Levin's pages' - Literary Review

'Compelling. Art historian Gail Levin has drawn on her close association with Lee Krasner and extensive research to produce a biography that rings fair and true' - Los Angeles Times

'[Levin's] book, dense with documentation and quotations from letters and interviews, is the culmination of decades of scholarship, advocacy and even friendship with Krasner ... empathetic and insightful ... Krasner comes wonderfully alive, especially in her own words, in Levin s pages' - Literary Review

'[Draws] on her close personal relationship with the painter and a multitude of interviews ... impressively researched' - Spectator

'Art historian Gail Levin's Lee Krasner is a quintuple whammy of a biography--the story of a major artist; a description of a notorious marriage; an education in 20th-century art; a gossipy immersion into Bohemian New York; and a settling of scores against those who practiced gender bias' - The Oprah Magazine

'Unfairly maligned as simply Mrs Jackson Pollock , this weighty first biography reveals a pioneering painter who campaigned for women s rights and created abstract art that pulsed with life' - Artists & Illustrators

'Packed with important insight into the post-war American art scene, this is a fitting tribute to an extraordinary woman' - The Lady