The Springs

Close up of The Springs

Densely layered, expressive brushwork in cream, white, and multiple shades of green cover a rectangular, horizontal canvas from edge to edge. Daubs and splashes of paint mingle with strokes resembling arcs, circles, ovals, and other curving forms to suggest movement and energy.
Densely layered, expressive brushwork in cream, white, and multiple shades of green cover a rectangular, horizontal canvas from edge to edge. Daubs and splashes of paint mingle with strokes resembling arcs, circles, ovals, and other curving forms to suggest movement and energy.
Lee Krasner, The Springs, 1964; Oil on canvas, 43 x 66 x 1 1/2 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; © The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Many first generation New York abstract expressionist painters developed one signature style that they maintained throughout their careers. Lee Krasner took a more radical approach, changing her style several times. In The Springs, she combined the vocabulary of circles, ovals, and chevron shapes that she first developed in her “Little Image” paintings of the 1940s with the daubs and splashes of paint that characterize her 1950s canvases.

The title of this work refers to the village near East Hampton, Long Island, where Krasner and her husband, artist Jackson Pollock, moved in 1945. After his death in 1956, Krasner began using the small barn on the couple’s property as her studio. For a few years after her mother’s death in 1959, Krasner painted her canvases in shades of white, black, and brown. Emerging from her own physical ailments in the early 1960s, she embraced a more lyrical approach to color and form. The nature-based hues in The Springs, along with its arcing lines and interlaced forms, are reminiscent of a wind-blown landscape.

Artwork Details

  • Artist

    Lee Krasner
  • Title

    The Springs
  • Date

    1964
  • Medium

    Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions

    43 x 66 in
  • Donor Credit

    Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay
  • Photo Credit

    © The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • On Display

    Yes