Lot 24 : Lee Krasner (1912-1984)
Auction Location: United States of America - 2005
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Artist or Maker:
Lee Krasner (1912-1984)
Title:
Untitled
Description:
Untitled
signed and dated 'Lee Krasner 62' (lower right)
oil and enamel on canvas
64 x 58 1/4 in. (162.5 x 147.9 cm.)
Painted in 1962.
Provenance:
Gift of the artist by the present owner, circa 1967
Published:
E. Landau, Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1995, p. 99, no. 371a (illustrated).
Notes:
The early 1960s mark the height of Lee Krasner's creative powers. Free of her duties as caretaker to Jackson Pollock and focusing once again on her own painting, she created powerful works out of energized skeins of paint. Emotionally wrenching in their impact, it is not surprising that Krasner was exploring and exercising her own wounded psyche during this seminal period.
Untitled, with its endless web of staccato marks and drips creates a sense of anxiety and foreboding in its complexity and ferocious application of paint. It is though also cathartic. Its aggressive web gives way to a meditative depth of space that can have the contradictory effect of soothing. Untitled reflects on a life lived between agony and glory. Speaking to Cindy Nemser about her paintings Krasner remarked, "My painting is so autobiographical, if anyone can take the trouble to read it" (cited in E. Landau, Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1995, p. 182).
Untitled was a gift of the artist to her nephew around 1967. When asked why he had chosen this particular work, he charmingly replied that it reminded him of pizza, testimony to the disarming gaze of children. For the first time since it was painted, Untitled is joining the public domain. It is a welcome addition to the pantheon of Krasner's finest paintings.
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