# Lee Krasner artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/lee-krasner/
Profile generated: 2026-05-16T10:00:00.000Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1908-10-27
- Death date: 1984-06-19
- Nationality: American
- Movements: Abstract Expressionism
- Common media: oil painting, collage, gouache, drawing, assemblage, mosaic, mural

## About Lee Krasner

Lee Krasner (1908–1984) was an American painter and a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, recognized for a body of work spanning more than five decades of restless formal reinvention. Born in Brooklyn to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Krasner trained at the Cooper Union Women's Art School and the National Academy of Design before studying with Hans Hofmann, who introduced her to Cubist and modernist ideas. She contributed murals to the Works Progress Administration during the 1930s and joined the American Abstract Artists group. Though often discussed in relation to her husband, Jackson Pollock—whom she married in 1945—Krasner maintained a distinct and evolving artistic voice across painting, collage, assemblage, and works on paper. Major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, and the Whitney Museum of American Art hold her work, and her career has received significant scholarly reappraisal since the 1980s.

## Common works and media

Krasner's output includes large-scale oil and acrylic paintings on canvas, smaller gouache and oil-on-paper works, collages that frequently incorporated cut-up fragments of her own earlier drawings, and occasional mosaic and mural commissions. Her Little Image series features densely worked, calligraphic abstractions on small canvases. Later works from the 1960s and 1970s tend to be broader in gesture and larger in scale, with bold color fields. Print editions and works on paper also appear in the market. Collectors may also encounter exhibition posters and photographs related to her legacy.

## Market and appraisal context

Krasner's work appears at auction primarily in Post-War and Contemporary Art and American Art sales. Key valuation factors include the period and series of a work—her Little Image paintings, collage-based compositions, and later large-scale canvases each carry distinct market profiles—as well as medium, dimensions, provenance, exhibition history, and condition. Works with Pollock-Krasner House or estate provenance tend to attract particular attention. Signed and dated paintings on canvas generally command the strongest results, while works on paper, collages, and prints represent a more accessible segment. Krasner destroyed or reworked many pieces throughout her career, making surviving works from certain periods relatively scarce.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine structured artist identity research from museum, library authority, and scholarly sources with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available.

## Sources

- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/3240
- RKD: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/46304
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q237959
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/72198276/
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500010144
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50044014
- Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lee-krasner-1441
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Krasner