Lee Krasner
Desert Moon1955

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Vertical abstract painting with burnt-orange ground, tall black spike forms, and overlapping lavender, magenta, and cream geometric and curved shapes

Mixed-media collage with torn paper and paint, featuring bold abstract shapes in black, orange-red, violet, and deep magenta, with visible torn edges and textured paint application.

Mixed-media collage with torn paper and painted surfaces in orange, purple, magenta, and deep rose against a black background, with ragged paper edges and visible layering.

Artist or Maker: Lee Krasner
United States, 1908-1984
Title: Desert Moon
Place Made: United States
Date Made: 1955
Medium: Collage of oil on paper on canvas, and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 58 × 42 1/2 in. (147.32 × 107.95 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Jo Ann and Julian Ganz Jr., Robert F. Maguire III, Leslie and John Dorman, Betty and Brack Duker, John and Joan Hotchkis, Mr. and Mrs. H. Tony Oppenheimer/Oppenheimer Brothers Foundation, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Sheila and Wally Weisman, Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross, Judith and Steaven K. Jones, Myron Laskin, Tally and Bill Mingst, and Irene Christopher through the 2000 Collectors Committee, Director's Discretionary Fund, Judith and Richard Smooke, and two anonymous donors
Accession Number: M.2000.82
Classification: Collages
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: Lee Krasner’s Abstract Expressionist canvases are packed with color and pattern, with layers of forms that overlap and intermingle. By 1942 Krasner had begun to explore collage, cutting up photographs and recycling fragments of her own work to form new compositions. By the 1950s her collages had grown in both scale and ambition. Desert Moon comprises vibrant, carefully arranged snippets of discarded paintings cut into vertical and biomorphic shapes.

Krasner’s work has previously been overshadowed by her links to famous male artists: she married Jackson Pollock, became friends with Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, and studied with Hans Hofmann, who said of one of her paintings, “This is so good, you would never know it was done by a woman.” More recent scholarship and exhibitions have restored her work to the center of Abstract Expressionism.

Wall label, 2021.
Provenance: The artist (1908-1984). Uris Buildings Corporation, New York; [Sold in 1976 at Sotheby's Parke Bernet, Inc., New York, May 17, 1976, Lot 311, “Important Post War and Contemporary Art” to]; [Pace Gallery]; [sold 1985 at Sotheby’s, New York, November 5, 1985, Lot 27, “Contemporary Art” to]; [Robert Miller Gallery and Eugene W. Thaw]; sold in 2000 to LACMA.
Selected Bibliography: Landau, Ellen G. Lee Krasner: a Catalogue Raisonné. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995.
Nairne, Eleanor, editor. Lee Krasner: Living Colour. London: Thames & Hudson, 2019.
Hustvedt, Siri, and Saskia Flower. Lee Krasner: Collage Paintings, 1938-1981. New York: Kasmin Gallery, 2021.

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