Lee Krasner

Known for: Abstract Expressionism; the Umber series

Lee Krasner studied with Hans Hofmann and was among the earliest American painters to engage seriously with European abstraction, but her career was consistently overshadowed by her marriage to Jackson Pollock. After his death in 1956, she moved into his studio and began making large-scale paintings — the Umber series, the Night Journeys — that were among the most physically ambitious of her career. She established the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which has distributed more than $60 million to artists since 1984.