Lee Krasner (23 page)

Lee Krasner posing as a bohemian, c. 1938, photographer is possibly Igor Pantuhoff. Krasner liked the form of this antique cast-iron garden bench, which remained with her until the end of her life.

Perle Fine, George Mercer, Lee Krasner, and Igor Pantuhoff in Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1938, photographed by Maurice Berezov. Fine remained one of Krasner's most supportive female friends.

Lee Krasner and Igor Pantuhoff on the beach, during the summer of 1938, when they and other friends spent their vacation in Provincetown on Cape Cod. As they sunbathed in the nude trying to warm up from the chilly waters, an unknown woman took their photograph, but, one friend recalled “there was no eroticism, nobody touched anybody else. Everyone was with their own.”

Letter from Igor Pantuhoff to Lee Krasner, October 24, 1939, Desperate, discouraged, and hoping for better fortune, Igor had gone to see his parents in Florida. He sent Krasner this letter illustrated by an elaborate sketch of himself reclining under the skimpy shade of a palm tree that he represented as an erect phallus. Collection of the Pollock-Krasner House.

Lee Krasner photographed by Maurice Berezov, c. 1940. Krasner, who worked as a model, developed a taste for elegant furniture and house plants, already evident here, even though she struggled to earn enough money on which to live.

George Mercer in his army uniform during World War II, when he and Lee Krasner (friends from the Hofmann School) corresponded at length and saw each other when he could get a leave. She was sympathetic and receptive to the Harvard-educated Mercer, who wrote discussing everything from Nietzsche and T.S. Eliot to his own frustrated passion to paint.

Lee Krasner before one of her abstract paintings, now lost, c. 1939–40. Photograph by Maurice Berezov.

Krasner supervised the production of nineteen store window displays meant to publicize courses offered in New York area schools to help the war effort. These courses were offered in the municipal colleges to prepare students for “service in the armed forces and in strategic war industries.” CR 200,
Spherical Trigonometry
, War Services Project Window, 1942, photomontage and collage, dimensions unknown, destroyed.

Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Anna Krasner, Ruth Stein, William Stein stand in the back row, with Muriel Stein and her half-brother Ronald Stein in the front row with Pollock and Krasner's dog Gyp, Springs, summer 1946.

Jackson, Lee, Gyp, and Caw-Caw (Jackson's tamed crow) on Lee's head, Springs, July 10, 1947. With their move to Springs, nature was a source of shared pleasure. Photograph by Ronald Stein.

Krasner and Pollock photographed in their Springs garden by Wilfrid Zogbaum, c. 1949.