Before I dive into the relationship between Lee and her husband Jackson Pollack, it's her attitude, the way she looked at art making, that interests me more than just a little. She denied a singular style to define her. She was a core player in the mans' club of abstract expressionism, although it was more than Jackson that she had to crawl out from under, but also the inherent sexism that was like a sculpture solid and unwavering. It was once said that her work was so good that it could be mistaken as the brush of a man.
Lee and Jackson established a close working relationship in 1946. Lee was taken with his work. She visited him often in his apartment/studio. By then she was already well known by the abex group. It was Lee that introduced him to the them. His work took off and Lee nurtured it. You might say she treated his work as though it was her child.
When they grew to become intimate, many thought her work came to a stop. Not so. She became a doting home maker and wife, in spite of Jacksons' infidelity and worsening alcoholism. In the background her work was silently flourishing. They married in 1955. A year later while she was in Europe, Jackson was in a fatal car crash.
She was hurt deeply, even though the circumstances of his death involved the taking of his lover as well. Yet she still promoted his work while furiously working on her own. Her tenacious work ethic pushed her to success, besides the boys club and Jackson, she had a limited education, worth mentioning was The Cooper Union School Of Art.
Galleries were initially in a quandary over her utter refusal to develop a singular style. Her first group exhibit was the Stable Gallery In New York, her first solo exhibit was in 1965 at the White Chapel Gallery of London. She painted what she felt and what she referenced. It didn't take long though for her work to be picked up by MOMA, and The Whitney Museum, both in New York.
There is an exhaustive list of books that parade her life and work. Besides painting, one of her greatest accomplishments was the Pollock Krasner Foundation that she requested to be formed in 1985, one year after her death in 1984. The mandate of the foundation is to provide grants for artists in several countries at any level. The foundation has grown in leaps and bounds and is still thriving.
What endears me to her is her resistance to style. My own credo is that-style is a trap of limitations.
Seated Nude 1940, collection of Museum Of Modern Art