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Lee Krasner: Charcoals: Art Basel 2021

September 21 – 26, 2021

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On the occasion of Art Basel 2021, Kasmin is pleased to present a solo exhibition of significant early charcoal works on paper by Lee Krasner, which represent the artist’s first foray into abstraction. This presentation features groundbreaking charcoal drawings created between 1937 and 1940, which Krasner realized while studying under Hans Hofmann in his eponymous School of Fine Arts in New York. Departing from her early representational paintings and drawings, Krasner immersed herself in the principles of Modernism and Cubism that were espoused by Hofmann, who was one of the most influential early catalysts in the development of the Abstract Expressionist movement in the US.

On the occasion of Art Basel 2021, Kasmin is pleased to present a solo exhibition of significant early charcoal works on paper by Lee Krasner, which represent the artist's first foray into abstraction. This presentation features groundbreaking charcoal drawings created between 1937 and 1940, which Krasner realized while studying under Hans Hofmann in his eponymous School of Fine Arts in New York. Departing from her early representational paintings and drawings, Krasner immersed herself in the principles of Modernism and Cubism that were espoused by Hofmann, who was one of the most influential early catalysts in the development of the Abstract Expressionist movement in the US.
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Several examples from this series were prominently featured in the universally-lauded retrospective entitled Lee Krasner: Living Colour, curated by Eleanor Nairne, which opened at the Barbican Centre in London in May 2019, then traveled to the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, followed by the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, and concluded at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in January 2021. Reviewing the retrospective at the Barbican for The New York Times, critic Jason Farago remarked on the charcoals’ significance: “The life drawings she did in his classes are an early revelation of this show: dense, foggy charcoal circuits, swallowing up Picasso’s split perspectives and the erotic machinery of the Surrealists. The lines appear nearly graven into the paper. Smudges and clouds of dark gray reveal the mercilessness of her corrections and revisions.”

Also included in Kasmin's exhibition at Art Basel is a late collage painting entitled Present Subjunctive (1976), in which the artist incorporated cut-up sections of her early charcoal drawings in a tour-de-force of Futurist dynamism and abstraction. Present Subjunctive is part of the seminal late series Eleven Ways To Use The Words To See, which were also notably featured in the 2019-21 traveling retrospective.

The first publication devoted to Krasner’s early charcoal drawings was released in conjunction with Art Basel 2021, and includes a new definitive text by Dr. Ellen Landau, the author of the Lee Krasner catalogue raisonné. Lee Krasner: Charcoals illustrates a large selection of Krasner’s charcoal drawings, including those held in important private collections, by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York, and in institutions around the world such as the Australian National Gallery, Canberra; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; amongst others.

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About the Artist

Lee Krasner

A pioneer among the first generation of Abstract Expressionism, Lee Krasner developed novel approaches to painting and collage for over half a century, demonstrating an endless drive for experimentation and reinvention. Widely recognized as a central protagonist among a cohort of artists that define postwar American painting, Krasner was subject to a critically-acclaimed major touring European institutional retrospective organized by the Barbican Art Gallery in 2019–21, followed by a solo exhibition at the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum in 2023. She was subject to two touring US institutional retrospectives in 1984–85 and 1999–2001. Her work is held in premier institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among many others.

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