Question 1

True or false: Lee Krasner was married to Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock.

Accepted Answer

True. They married in 1945, and she was a key influence on his work, though her own art was often overshadowed.

Question 2

True or false: Krasner’s signature style was exclusively large-scale drip painting.

Accepted Answer

False. She worked in diverse modes: collage, mosaic, and gestural abstraction. Drip painting was Pollock’s hallmark, not hers.

Question 3

True or false: Lee Krasner was the first female artist to have a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

Accepted Answer

True. Her 1984 MoMA retrospective was a landmark, though it came late in her career—she was then 75.

Question 4

True or false: Krasner was born in Brooklyn to a wealthy art-collecting family.

Accepted Answer

True. Her parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants who struggled financially; she worked odd jobs to pay for art school.

Question 5

True or false: After Pollock’s death, Krasner stopped painting entirely for over a decade.

Accepted Answer

False. She mourned but painted intensely, producing major works like the 'Umber' series within two years of his 1956 death.

Question 6

True or false: She studied with Hans Hofmann, who banned color in her early work.

Accepted Answer

False. Hofmann encouraged color and structure; she never stopped using it. The ban myth stems from a misinterpretation of his critiques.

Question 7

True or false: Krasner’s 1950s 'Little Image' series was inspired by ancient Hebrew calligraphy.

Accepted Answer

False. The series was abstract and organic, but she explicitly denied Hebrew inspiration—it’s a persistent but incorrect theory.

Question 8

True or false: Krasner destroyed many of her own paintings before her death.

Accepted Answer

True. In the 1950s, she cut up and repurposed dozens of her canvases, a radical act few artists have documented.

Lee Krasner Trivia Questions