Krasner’s first solo exhibition opened at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York. It mattered because it marked her early public attempt to be seen as an independent Abstract Expressionist, not only as part of Pollock’s circle. Critical response was mixed, and Krasner later reworked or destroyed some of the paintings from this period, reinforcing a pattern of constant revision in her practice.
By the early 1950s, Krasner moved away from her dense, small-scale “Little Image” approach toward more open, larger brushwork and geometric structure. This shift set up the post-1956 period, because it showed her readiness to change scale and pictorial “breathing room.” It also positioned her to use the Springs home and studio environment for increasingly ambitious canvases.
Krasner began what is often called her “Earth Green” series, made on a larger scale and with more forceful, bodily forms. These works are commonly linked to the emotional strain surrounding Pollock’s declining health, alcoholism, and their difficult marriage. The series is a bridge into her post-Pollock work because it starts before his death but continues into the period of mourning and reinvention.
Jackson Pollock died in a car crash in August 1956. In the years that followed, Krasner moved into Pollock’s barn studio at their home in Springs, gaining space to work at a scale that had been difficult in her smaller upstairs room. This physical change in working conditions helped shape her late painting: bigger canvases, more sweeping gestures, and more sustained series thinking.
Krasner completed The Seasons (1957), one of her best-known large-scale paintings. It combined vigorous gesture with vivid color and organic shapes, signaling her ability to command the monumental format associated with Abstract Expressionism. The work is often treated as a key statement of her artistic independence in the years immediately after Pollock’s death.
Krasner sustained the Earth Green direction through the late 1950s, developing crowded, animated surfaces with hybrid plant- and body-like forms. Continuing the series after Pollock’s death helped her transform grief and upheaval into a structured artistic project. This continuity matters because it shows her late style growing through persistence rather than a single dramatic break.
Krasner began the “Umber Paintings,” restricting her palette largely to browns, creams, and whites while working on large canvases. The limited color range focused attention on motion, structure, and forceful brushwork, and it also matched her practical reality of working at night under artificial light during periods of insomnia. The series is widely seen as one of her most intense late bodies of work.
By 1962, the Umber series reached its conclusion; it is often described as a compact group of about two dozen paintings. Finishing the series mattered because it closed a focused, grief- and solitude-driven phase and set the stage for renewed color and more openly “floral” forms in the 1960s. It also demonstrated Krasner’s ability to define and complete a coherent late-career cycle.
A major retrospective of Krasner’s work opened at London’s Whitechapel Gallery in late 1965. This mattered because it strengthened her international reputation at a time when many women Abstract Expressionists were still under-credited in the mainstream story of the movement. The exhibition also helped frame her post-1950s reinventions as a serious, continuous career rather than isolated stylistic shifts.
A large U.S. retrospective, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective, opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in late 1983. It mattered because it signaled a growing institutional reappraisal of her achievements during her lifetime, especially her post-Pollock paintings. The show also laid groundwork for further museum attention in 1984, as her health declined.
Krasner died in June 1984 in New York City. Her death marked an endpoint for a late career defined by sustained series-making after Pollock’s death and by increased institutional recognition in the 1960s–1980s. It also set in motion efforts to preserve and interpret both her work and Pollock’s through her estate planning.
Soon after her death, the Museum of Modern Art presented Lee Krasner, 1911–1984: Memorial. The exhibition mattered because it publicly affirmed her standing within postwar American painting at a leading modern art museum. It also helped shift attention toward her independent late achievement, not only her role in the Pollock story.
In 1985, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established through Krasner’s bequest to provide grants supporting visual artists. This outcome matters as a concrete legacy of her late-life choices: she used the value of the Pollock and Krasner estates to create long-term, practical support for working artists. The foundation also became a major steward of scholarship and public access related to her work.
Lee Krasner's post-Pollock work and late abstract paintings (1951–1984)