Lee Krasner in Paris: Why Her First Solo Show in France Puts the 1960s Centre Stage

It has taken more than four decades after her death for Lee Krasner to receive a solo exhibition in France. “Lee Krasner: Works from the 1960s” opens at Gagosian’s rue de Ponthieu gallery on 19 October 2026, on the eve of Art Basel Paris, and runs until 18 December. Organised with Olney Gleason and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, it concentrates on a single decade — the one in which Krasner stepped fully into her own scale and colour.

A central figure of the New York School

Born in Brooklyn in 1908, Krasner trained with Hans Hofmann and absorbed Matisse, Mondrian and Picasso long before Abstract Expressionism had a name. She married Jackson Pollock in 1945, and for a decade the two were each other’s fiercest critics and strongest supporters. For much of the twentieth century, however, her reputation was filtered through his — a distortion that museum retrospectives such as the Barbican’s Lee Krasner: Living Colour (2019–21) have done much to correct.

Paris, 1956

The French setting is more than a market choice. Krasner made her first trip to Europe in the summer of 1956 and was in Paris, visiting museums including the Louvre, when she learned of Pollock’s death that August. The years that followed were among the hardest of her life — and the most productive. A Paris exhibition of her work therefore carries a quiet biographical charge.

From the umber paintings to full colour

Around 1959–62 Krasner produced the so-called “Night Journeys,” vast canvases in umber and white, painted largely at night. The works in this exhibition trace what came next. Seeded (1960) still carries that restraint; Icarus (1964) and Comet (1966–70) open into expansive, rhythmic fields of colour and sweeping gesture; and Portrait in Green (1969) shows the brighter, more architectural compositions with which she closed the decade. Gouache and collage works on paper, such as Earth No. 1 (1969), show the same energy at intimate scale.

What links these works is rhythm. Krasner thought of painting as something close to breathing or dancing — forms swell, repeat and break across the canvas without a single focal point. It is a different solution to the problem of all-over abstraction from Pollock’s, and seeing a concentrated group in one room makes that independence unmistakable.

Paris and New York in dialogue

The timing is deliberate. The Paris show coincides with Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (4 October 2026 – 31 January 2027), described by the gallery as the first major exhibition to examine the two artists together in depth. For collectors and historians, the two presentations offer a rare chance to see the 1960s Krasner both on her own terms and in conversation.

Visiting information

Gagosian, 4 rue de Ponthieu, 75008 Paris. 19 October – 18 December 2026; opening reception Monday 19 October, 6–8pm. Open Tuesday–Saturday, 10:30am–6:30pm. Contacts, social links and a map are on our Lee Krasner exhibition listing; the official page is on Gagosian’s website. Browse more shows on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.