Stepping into this show, you glimpse the moment around 1960 where Lee Krasner’s work took flight in vast, spectacular paintings.
You could succumb immediately, initially ignoring earlier work in the upstairs galleries. But don’t: follow her journey, the experience is all the more euphoric.
Thirty five years on from her death, Krasner is finally emerging from the shadow of being Mrs Jackson Pollock. As she once said: “I painted before Pollock, during Pollock, after Pollock.” This show maps that trajectory, and the benefits and hindrances of their association, brilliantly — from early self-portraits, through Michelangelo-inspired drawings, to her first mature paintings, the tightly packed abstracts she called Little Images.
Around 1954, she leaps forward, loosening up through anger, tearing up failed drawings and paintings in marvellously bold collages, clearly inspired by Matisse’s cut-outs.
She carried this newfound confidence into figurative paintings, the first made just before Pollock’s death in 1956, the three others here in the immediate aftermath. They’re astonishing: utterly her own but clearly inspired by Picasso’s tumultuous figurations, and Pollock’s pre-abstract works. Krasner’s painting Birth clearly evokes Pollock’s painting of the same title from 1941.
So now, descend the stairs and enter one of the great exhibition moments this year. With access to Pollock’s former studio, Krasner’s work leapt in size, and while bodily gestures inform the vast paintings, her language becomes largely abstract again. Magnificent paintings resulted, initially made in umber and white, during bouts of insomnia, and later in an array of vivid colours. These enormous abstracts confirm something that should have been reiterated more often in the past: Lee Krasner was a great artist.
Until September 1 (020 7638 8891, barbican.org.uk)
