Lee Krasner: Color and Graceful, Rhythmic Form

Lee Krasner - Imperative - 1976 - Oil, charcoal and paper on canvas - 50 x 50 in. (127 x 127 cm) - National Gallery of Art - Washington, DC (click photo for larger image)American artist Lee Krasner (1908-1984) explored and experimented with both painting and collage techniques, for over six decades. 

“An ambitious and important artist in New York City during Abstract Expressionism's heyday, Lee Krasner's own career often was compromised by her role as supportive wife to Jackson Pollock, arguably the most significant postwar American painter, as well as by the male-dominated art world.” And yet, it has often been observed many times that, “without Lee Krasner, there would have been no “Jackson Pollock”. Pollock’s vision was certainly his own. But it was Krasner’s thorough understanding of art theory and current trends that set Pollock on his path, and it was Krasner who propelled his career and ensured his legacy.

In terms of her own work, Krasner always explored the synthesis of abstract form and psychological content that was at the heart of Abstract Expressionism. She was remarkably versatile and possessed stellar skills, which, when coupled with her intensive training and knowledge, enabled her to revise her style and technique multiple times over the course of her career.

Six months after her death, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City held a retrospective exhibition of her work. A review of the exhibition in the New York Times noted that it "clearly defines Krasner's place in the New York School" and that she "is a major, independent artist of the pioneer Abstract Expressionist generation, whose stirring work ranks high among that produced here in the last half-century.” Krasner is now seen as a key transitional figure within abstraction, who connected early-20th-century art with the new ideas of postwar America.

Grace Hartigan: Changing the Narrative

Grace Hartigan - Grand Street Brides - 1954 - oil on canvas - 72 9/16 × 102 3/8 inches - Whitney Museum of American Art (click photo for larger image)A “Second-Generation” Abstract Expressionist, Grace Hartigan (1922-2008), developed a new form of painting based on bold gesture and experimental brushwork. She was highly regarded for her commitment to art, as well as for a hard-bitten toughness, embodied in her paintings. 

Although Hartigan built her early career upon complete abstraction, in 1952 she began incorporating recognizable motifs and characters from an array of sources into her art. This change was seen as a betrayal by some of her “first generation” colleagues—a rather paradoxical reaction from artists who struggled for the right to choose for themselves how and what to paint.

Hartigan’s inclusion of certain objects in her paintings also have identified her work as a precursor to Pop Art. However, she thoroughly disliked the mass manufacturing that movement embraced and celebrated. 

Hartigan moved between figuration and abstraction with ease throughout her long career. Indeed, her best known works combine the two. You can read more about here right here on What About Art?.

Rufino Tamayo: Strong Colors—Strong Styles

Rufino Tamayo - Women of Tehuantepec - 1939 - Oil on canvas - 33 7/8 x 57 1/8 in. (86 x 145 cm) - Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (click photo for larger image)Mexican Artist Rufino Tamayo (1889-1991) created paintings that draw on Mexican folk art and ceramics for their themes, and for their rich use of color and texture. But their sophisticated compositions are more closely indebted to Cubism. In the 1930s Tamayo painted tropical fruits, perhaps influenced by his experiences as a child working for his aunt's wholesale fruit business. Later his imagery became more grotesque, dominated by animals. From the mid 1940s onwards, he moved towards abstraction and placed greater emphasis on his use of strong colors.

The artist was born in Oaxaca, but following the death of his parents in 1911 he went to live with his aunt in Mexico City. He studied at the Escuela des Artes Plasticas, and in 1921 was appointed head of the Department of Ethnographic Drawing at the Archaeological Museum, which introduced him to folk art. 

From 1936-48, Tamayo was based in New York. Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler first studied with Tamayo at the Dalton School, and always claimed to owe him a great debt. After an exhibition which marked his return to Mexico (at the Pallacio des Bellas Artes, 1948) was bitterly attacked by the muralists for its disavowal of popular and accessible forms, Tamayo moved to Paris. He finally returned to Mexico City in 1964, donating his collection of Pre-Columbian art to Oaxaca to form the Museo de Arte Prehispanico de Mexico Rufino Tamayo. In 1981 his collection of modern art opened to the public at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Internacional Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City. Tamayo was an outsider in post-Revolutionary Mexico, politically neutral and opposing the muralists' commitment to a public, popular art.

Duane Hansen: It’s Alive!

Duane Hanson - Woman Eating - 1971 - polyester resin and fiberglass with oil and acrylic paints and found accessories - Smithsonian American Art Museum - Washington, DCAmerican figurative sculptor Duane Hanson (1925-1996) created lifelike figures made of cast fiberglass and polyester resin and dressed in everyday clothes. They often fooled the public into believing that they were viewing real people. Because of its faithfulness to reality, Hanson’s work is often categorized with that of the Photorealist painters of the same era, who based their paintings on photographic images.

Unlike the two-dimensional paintings, however, Hanson’s three-dimensional objects, life-size and realistic down to the hair on their arms, are uncanny in that they are simultaneously familiar in their lifelike appearance and yet strange as static works of art.

Hanson’s subjects of the late 1960s were political, including war, gang victims, and the homeless. Though he later tempered his political message, he continued to address the largely thankless roles of the working class—housewives, repairmen, office cleaners, dishwashers, museum guards, and janitors, whose bowed heads and vacant gazes reveal boredom and exhaustion.

Mary Frank: The Emotional Impact of Memory and Loss

Mary Frank - Persephone - 1985 - Terracotta - 27 x 73 x 40 in (68.6 x 185.4 x 101.6 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York, NY (click photo for larger image)Mary Frank (born 1933) is a British-born American artist “best known for her abstract paintings and sculptures which depict the emotional impact of memory and loss”. Frank has developed a unique process of creating art in which she works with the medium until the form of the piece reveals itself to her. (The great Renaissance artist, Michelangelo, claimed to have worked his sculptures this way, as well.)

During World War II, Frank was sent from London to live with her mother’s parents in Brooklyn, where she remained for several years. As an art student, she studied under German painter Max Beckmann at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School, as well as under Hans Hofmann, at his private studio school in Greenwich Village. (Both of these artists are discussed elsewhere on What About Art?.

Although Frank was trained as a painter, she was inspired to pursue sculpture after purchasing her first kiln in 1969. Since then, she has been recognized for her dramatic and emotive sculptures of animals and human subjects. Today, her works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Art at Yale University in New Haven, CT, among others. Frank lives and works between Lake Hill, NY and New York, NY