Gothic Landscape

1961
oil on canvas

Style/Movement: Abstract, 20th Century

Purchased 1981

T03291

Although this is an abstract painting, the thick vertical lines that dominate its center can be seen as trees, with thick knotted roots at their base. It was probably this that led Krasner to call the painting Gothic Landscape, several years after completing it. Krasner was married to the artist Jackson Pollock and, during their life together, her work was eclipsed by his rise to fame. Gothic Landscape was made in the years following his death from a car crash in 1956. It belongs to a series of large canvases whose violent and expressive gestural brush strokes reflected her feelings of grief.
(From the display caption July 2008)