Question 1

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 2

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 3

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

Accepted Answer

False. Lee Krasner's parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants who struggled financially and were not art collectors. She worked odd jobs to pay for art school.

Question 4

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 5

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

Accepted Answer

False. Georgia O'Keeffe had a MoMA retrospective in 1946, so Krasner was not the first.

Question 6

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 7

True or false: Lee Krasner studied with Hans Hofmann, who banned color in Lee Krasner's early work.

Accepted Answer

False. Hofmann emphasized color and structure, and Krasner never stopped using color. The ban myth arises from a misinterpretation of his critiques, not an actual restriction on her palette.

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