Lee and Me: An Intimate Portrait of Lee Krasner

Ruth Appelhof

Hardcover | 17 x 2.62 x 24 cm | 192 pp

Officina Libraria | 2019 | 9788833670164

Angry, outrageous, defiant, and courageous are some of the words that describe the American Abstract Expressionist artist Lee Krasner (1908-1984) – the subject of this very personal memoir inspired by Ruth Appelhof’s 1974 summer with her in East Hampton, Long Island.

Best remembered by many as Jackson Pollock’s widow, Krasner is regarded more by ‘art-world insiders’ as the producer of a major body of work that influenced the evolution of contemporary art – in particular, that made by women in the 20th and 21st centuries.

As a scholar and a friend, Appelhof re-examines Krasner’s contributions in light of the intellectual and emotional experiences that she so candidly shared with her in weeks of interviews. In addition, Appelhof explores Lee Krasner’s relationships with others – friends, art-world luminaries, artists, and other ‘summer sitters’ allowed into her private sanctuary – through interviews. Those recollections offer a window into the artist’s intense and idiosyncratic personal life as well as into her contributions through the groundbreaking work she produced over the course of more than six decades.

Published to accompany the Lee Krasner Retrospective at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2019.