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Images by Matthew Stone. Courtesy of Gentle Monste

Lee Krasner

Lee Krasner (1908–1984) was born in Brooklyn as Lena Krassner and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish, Russian émigré family. She decided to become an artist at the age of 14, and was one of the first artists in New York to adopt an entirely abstract approach. She went on to be one of the pioneers of Abstract Expressionism. In 1942, her work was included in a group exhibition entitled French and American Painting, and the only fellow exhibitor that she had not met was Jackson Pollock, so she decided to visit his studio. From then on, they were together and in 1945 they married and moved to Springs, Long Island.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Krasner refused to develop a “signature image,” which she considered to be “rigid rather than being alive.” Working in cycles, she continually sought out new means for authentic expression, even during the most tumultuous of times, which included Pollock's emotional volatility and his sudden death in a car crash in 1956. Krasner's formidable spirit is felt throughout the body of work that she created over more than fifty years in the studio—celebrated in this exhibition.

Combat, 1965

Is that face on the right Pollock’s? … a detail from Icarus, in Lee Krasner: Living Colour. Photograph: The Jewish Museum

Dynamic paintings that fizz and fascinate rescue the endlessly surprising artist from her husband Jackson Pollock’s shadow in this thrilling major retrospective.

Krasner began conventionally enough, with self-portraits whose masses of hair and clotted paint already had in them the kind of organised turmoil and tonalities that would reappear in her mature work. Her naked life drawings (much better, it must be said, than Pollock’s Michelangelo-inspired early drawings), had a kind of smoothed beefiness. One female nude floats rather than sits on her diminutive chair. Later, Krasner began classes at Hofmann’s 9th Street school, where she encountered his very physical teaching style – correcting students’ work by drawing over it, or tearing up drawings and reassembling them in new configurations.

Murakami Takashi

He is one of the most influential Japanese artists born after the 1960s. He is not only a widely loved artist in Japan, but also an idol of the new generation of young people in Japan. He strongly realized that contemporary Western art is completely different from Japanese art creation. The important thing is how our generation does not rely on any inherent cultural system to create the most essential things. Therefore, his works not only integrate the elements of opposition between Eastern tradition and Western civilization, elegant art and popular culture, but also retain the entertainment and appreciation of his works. It is a product that combines the characteristics of Japanese contemporary popular cartoon art and traditional Japanese painting style. The interestingness of his works is worth mentioning. Takashi Murakami implanted a variant image of Mickey Mouse in his own work and regarded it as his own incarnation and a unique visual symbol.

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Pablo Picasso

Picasso's artistic career almost throughout his life, his work styles are rich and varied, and later generations used the phrase "Picasso is always young" to describe Picasso's changing art forms. Historiography had to divide his vast works into different periods-the "blue period", "pink period" in the early years, the "black period" in the heyday, "analysis and synthesis of cubism", and later " Surrealism period" and so on. His "Girl of Yavignon" created in 1907 was the first work considered to be cubist and a famous masterpiece with landmark significance. It not only marked a major turning point in Picasso’s personal artistic journey, but also a revolutionary breakthrough in the history of modern Western art, which triggered the birth of the Cubism movement.