16/11/2025
She introduced him to the critics. She refined his technique. She was already famous when they met. Then they called him a genius—and erased her completely from history.
Her name was Lee Krasner.
You probably know her husband's name: Jackson Po***ck.
And that's exactly the problem.
The Artist Who Came First
Brooklyn, New York, 1908.
Lena Krassner was born to Russian-Jewish immigrants who spoke Yiddish and wanted traditional things for their daughter: marriage, children, a quiet life.
At fourteen, Lee announced she was going to art school.
Her parents were horrified. Nice Jewish girls didn't become artists.
Lee didn't care what nice girls were supposed to do.
She enrolled at Cooper Union's Women's Art School in 1926. Then the National Academy of Design, where she mastered classical techniques—drawing from life, studying the old masters, learning traditional composition.
But Lee wasn't interested in traditional.
In 1929, the Museum of Modern Art opened in New York. Lee walked through those doors and everything changed. She saw Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian. Art that broke every rule she'd been taught.
This was what she wanted to create.
Building a Reputation
The Great Depression hit. Artists starved. But Roosevelt's WPA Federal Art Project paid artists to create public murals.
Lee joined immediately, working in the mural division, creating large-scale public art alongside other struggling artists. More importantly, it connected her to New York's emerging modern art scene.
By the late 1930s, Lee had become a serious force.
She joined the American Abstract Artists in 1939—a prestigious group dedicated to promoting abstract art in America. Through them, she met everyone who mattered: Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Piet Mondrian.
These were the artists who would define modern art.
And Lee Krasner was one of them.
She had her own studio. She was creating bold, geometric abstract paintings. She was exhibiting. Critics knew her name.
She had spent over a decade studying, working, refining her craft, building her reputation.
She was already an established artist when she met Jackson Po***ck in 1942.
The Man Who Needed Help
Po***ck was younger. Less educated. Less connected. Struggling.
He was talented but rough—his work was chaotic, undisciplined. He was an alcoholic with a violent temper. Most people in the art world saw him as troubled, possibly hopeless.
Lee saw potential.
She looked at his early abstract work and saw something raw and powerful. She also saw that he needed guidance, structure, someone who understood modern art theory and could help him channel his energy into something coherent.
She became that person.
Lee introduced Jackson Po***ck to Peggy Guggenheim—one of the most important art collectors in the world. Guggenheim gave Po***ck his first major show.
Lee introduced him to Clement Greenberg—the most influential art critic in America. Greenberg became Po***ck's greatest champion.
Without these introductions, Jackson Po***ck might have remained an unknown alcoholic painter in New York.
Lee also worked directly with Po***ck on his technique. She had extensive formal training. She understood composition, color theory, the history of modernism. She helped him refine his chaotic drip paintings into something critics and collectors could appreciate.
She gave him vocabulary to talk about his work. She gave him legitimacy.
The Disappearing Act
Lee and Jackson married. They moved to a farmhouse in Springs, East Hampton.
It was supposed to be their shared studio—two artists working side by side.
Instead, Lee's career started to disappear.
The art world decided Jackson Po***ck was a genius. He became the face of Abstract Expressionism. Magazines photographed him. Critics wrote essays about him. His paintings sold for huge sums.
And Lee became "Jackson Po***ck's wife."
The woman who had been exhibiting and respected in New York since the 1930s—who had more education, more experience, more connections than Po***ck when they met—was suddenly invisible.
Critics who reviewed shows would write extensively about Po***ck's work and mention Lee's paintings in passing, if at all. Gallery owners wanted Po***ck, not Krasner. When people visited their studio, they asked to see his work, not hers.
Many assumed Lee had stopped painting entirely. Why would she bother? She had her genius husband to take care of.
But Lee never stopped painting.
While Po***ck was in his studio creating the drip paintings that would make him famous, Lee was in her smaller studio creating her own powerful abstract work.
She painted through the 1940s. She painted through the 1950s. She adapted her style, experimented with scale, incorporated collage techniques.
She just did it in Po***ck's shadow—in the room no one visited.
The Widow
Jackson Po***ck died in a car crash while driving drunk with his mistress. Lee was at home.
At 48 years old, Lee was suddenly a widow.
And then something remarkable happened.
Without Po***ck's massive presence overshadowing her, Lee's work began to gain attention. She had more space in the studio. More time. More freedom to create at the scale she'd always wanted.
Her paintings from the late 1950s and 1960s are enormous, bold, explosive with color and movement. She was in her fifties and creating some of the most powerful work of her career.
But the art world still couldn't see her clearly.
They called her "Po***ck's widow." They analyzed her post-1956 work for signs of grief over her husband's death, as if everything she created had to be about him.
They couldn't imagine that Lee Krasner was simply an artist doing what she'd always done: making art.
The Reckoning That Came Too Late
By the 1960s, the feminist movement began challenging how women were treated in every field—including art.
Young feminist critics started asking uncomfortable questions: Where were the women in Abstract Expressionism? Why had their contributions been erased?
They discovered Lee Krasner.
Not "Jackson Po***ck's wife." Not "Po***ck's widow."
Lee Krasner, the artist who had been there first.
The artist whose expertise and connections had literally created Jackson Po***ck's career.
Art dealer John Bernard Myers said it bluntly: "There would never have been a Jackson Po***ck without a Lee Po***ck."
Critics began reassessing Lee's role. They acknowledged she had influenced Po***ck's work significantly. They admitted her introductions to Guggenheim and Greenberg had made his career possible.
They finally looked at her paintings and saw them for what they were: powerful, original, significant works of art.
Lee continued painting through the 1970s—in her sixties and seventies, still experimenting, still pushing herself.
She finally began receiving the recognition she had deserved for forty years.
But it came so late.
The Recognition She Never Saw
June 19, 1984. Lee Krasner died at age 75 in New York City.
Six months later, the Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective exhibition of her work.
Lee was only the second woman ever to receive a solo retrospective at MoMA. The first had been Helen Frankenthaler in 1969.
Think about that.
MoMA had been open since 1929—fifty-five years—and had given solo retrospectives to only two women.
The exhibition proved what Lee had always known: her work was extraordinary. Critics finally realized they were looking at the career of a major artist who had been working at the highest level for over forty years.
An artist who had been there at the creation of Abstract Expressionism.
An artist whose influence had shaped one of the most important movements in modern art.
An artist they had completely overlooked because she was a woman married to a more famous man.
What History Stole
Today, Lee Krasner's paintings hang in major museums worldwide. Art historians acknowledge her crucial role in Abstract Expressionism. Her work sells for millions.
But she should never have had to wait until after her death to receive that recognition.
Lee Krasner was already an established, respected artist when she met Jackson Po***ck.
She had the education. The connections. The experience.
She introduced him to the people who made his career.
She helped refine his technique.
She supported him through alcoholism and violence.
And the art world erased her for it.
They called him a genius.
They called her his wife.
She was painting masterpieces in the next room, and no one even looked.
The Pattern That Continues
Lee Krasner's story isn't unique.
It's the story of countless women whose work was credited to men. Whose contributions were erased. Whose genius was attributed to their husbands, brothers, male colleagues.
Being talented wasn't enough. Being first wasn't enough. Being the one who made it all possible wasn't enough.
If you were a woman, history erased you.
Unless people fight to remember.
Lee Krasner spent over forty years creating powerful, innovative abstract art. She influenced an entire movement. She shaped American modernism.
And for most of her life, the world only knew her as Jackson Po***ck's wife.
It took feminism to bring her back. It took critics finally asking: "Where are the women?"
It took people looking past the famous husband and seeing the artist who was there first—who made it all possible—who kept creating brilliant work even when no one was looking.
She introduced him to the critics who made him famous.
She refined his technique.
She created revolutionary art for forty years.
They called him a genius and forgot she existed.
Until finally, decades too late, they remembered.
Her name is Lee Krasner.
And she deserves to be remembered.
~Old Photo Club
