In Paris, a Spotlight on Lee Krasner After Jackson Pollock

In July of 1956, Lee Krasner traveled to Paris for the first time. She went on her own, leaving her husband, Jackson Pollock, back in Springs, New York. She stayed at a hotel on the Quai Voltaire and visited the Louvre, where she admired the Old Masters—Uccello, Mantegna, and Goya in particular—and met up with the likes of fellow artist Helen Frankenthaler and dealer Betty Parsons.

If she and Pollock had hit a rough patch in their marriage, she nonetheless wrote him a letter (held in the Smithsonian Archives) recounting these activities and letting him know, “I miss you and wish you were sharing this with me.” She also thanked him for the “most beautiful deep red roses” that he sent her from afar. Krasner was still in Paris a few weeks later when she learned that Pollock had died in a car accident; she flew back immediately.

Seven decades later, her first solo show in Paris has opened ahead of Art Basel. With “Lee Krasner: Works from the 1960s,” Gagosian has partnered with Olney Gleason and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation to assemble an eye-opening presentation from a key period in her career. Remarkably, this marks her first solo show here, and it dovetails perfectly with the Metropolitan Museum’s blockbuster exhibition, “Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous,” an enthralling survey of the two trailblazing artists that also captures how her career continued for some 30 years after his death.

It’s not as though Krasner was unknown in Paris; she received the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters distinction in 1983, the year before she died at the age of 75. But anyone discovering her art for the first time—or else those already familiar with her propulsive mark-making—will be rewarded with a condensed immersion into American abstraction that acknowledges her exceedingly personal and shape-shifting approach to working.

For my walkthrough of the show, I was joined by Eric Gleason, whose gallery represents the estate of both Krasner and Pollock worldwide; Caroline Black, executive director of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (established in 1985); and Kara Vander Weg, a senior director at Gagosian, New York. Under a large skylight that emphasized Krasner’s emphatic application of color, we discussed how the ’60s offered a revealing glimpse into her output.

“She was a restless experimenter, pivoter, editor—and even within this concise 10-year period, there’s a lot of range,” said Gleason. “The diversity is evidenced by putting these paintings together.”

Vander Weg said they always intended the show as a complement to the one at the Met, especially given that Krasner is less known in France. Of her roughtly 600 works total, 210 paintings exist today (she had a habit of taking apart, repurposing, and collaging old canvases). The group suggested around one-third of those is currently being shown.

Of the 16 paintings and works on paper at Gagosian, there are two from her Umber series—Seeded and Uncaged—made in 1960, when she was suffering from insomnia following her mother’s death. They are the earliest in the show and, despite the somber brown and black tonality, they emit a kind of wild urgency from opposite walls of the main gallery space. “Don’t you feel like she’s just roaring, letting herself go?” mused Vander Weg.

Conversely, along the largest wall are three canvases that brim with layers of color, Krasner’s brushwork striking and splattering in coral, mauve, ochre, and purple. Gleason pointed out how Krasner painted Chrysalis and Icarus with a broken right wrist, suffered after a brain hemorrhage led to a fall. (The smaller stippling on the surface was Krasner holding the paint tube in her left hand and guiding it with her right.)

In the adjacent gallery, amidst textured gouache works on pebbly Howell paper, there’s a rhapsody in deep orange titled Camouflage that deliberately avoids blending into its surroundings, and Portrait in Green with its bold, gestural lines. When Ulla Johnson worked with the Pollock-Krasner Foundation to design printed pieces for her spring 2025 collection, she used the latter as well as Comet (1966-70), the latest painting on display, which shifts into a more diffuse composition of floating geometric shapes.

“Kara and I were talking earlier that this piece looks back and looks forward,” said Black. Facing Comet, I realized that Black was wearing Johnson’s blouse, which faithfully captured the pops of magenta and green across its ruffled front.

The Pollack-Krasner Foundation doesn’t merely uphold both artists’ legacies: it exists primarily to support other artists and organizations. More than 5,200 artists in 80 countries have benefited from upwards of $96 million in grants. “We will occasionally let Eric sell a piece,” she said with a laugh. “She never would have believed it; very few artists endowed foundations at the time [Krasner] died.”

“It’s meaningful for us to know all the funding goes right back artists, arts communities, and organizations,” Gleason added.

Over the past few seasons of big-name exhibitions in Paris, many institutions have leaned towards exceptional women artists across different eras, the commonality being that they hadn’t previously been spotlighted here: Hilma Af Klint (Grand Palais), Leonora Carrington (Musée du Luxembourg), Lee Miller (Musée d’Art Moderne), and Eva Gonzalès (on now at the Petit Palais). But the temptation to single out Krasner’s contribution to the canon as a woman means not recognizing her overall greatness. “When people think of Lee Krasner, there isn’t one singular thing,” said Gleason. Perhaps more meaningful is that Krasner freely considered herself a “damn good painter.”

Incidentally, Black mentioned that the Foundation is in possession of her two Gucci handbags, donated by her niece Rena “Rusty” Kanokogi and Kanokogi’s daughter, Jean. Inside remain various museum benefactor cards and her charge account card for the Pearl Paint art-supply store. “There were different names: Lee Pollock, Lee Krasner, Lee Krasner Pollock,” said Black. Ostensibly, the artist was comfortable with all these identities. There were also lipsticks that the Foundation went so far as to recreate for everyone internally. They called it “Krasner’s Kiss.”

“Lee Krasner: Works from the 1960s” is on view at Gagosian on rue de Ponthieu, Paris, through December 18, 2026.