Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, Stony Brook University

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The former home and studio of two of America’s foremost abstract painters, a National Historic Landmark, preserves the environment that inspired them and contains evidence of their creative processes. Guided tours are given by advance reservation from May through October. Wearing special slippers, visitors walk on the studio floor covered with the brilliant colors and rhythmic gestures found in Pollock’s masterpieces. On the studio walls, evidence of Krasner’s dynamic painting technique is visible. Two exhibitions are presented each season. The Study Center is open by appointment year-round. In-person and remote educational programming is offered throughout the year.

SPECIAL RESOURCES

“I don’t look at the view, I watch it. The land is alive, tells you things when you let it.”

— Jackson Pollock

“I cannot conceive anything outside of nature. Growth is part of it, change is constant. I don’t feel I can separate myself from nature.”

— Lee Krasner

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)

Jackson Pollock was born in Wyoming and grew up in the Southwest. He moved to New York City in 1930 and studied with Thomas Hart Benton. While working for the WPA Federal Art Project, he was introduced to liquid paint as an art medium in a 1936 workshop with the Mexican artist Siqueiros and experimented with it during the early and mid 1940s. In 1945 he and his wife, Lee Krasner, moved to eastern Long Island, where he perfected the pouring technique that made him famous. A 1949 Life magazine profile introduced his spontaneous action paintings to a national audience. After struggling unsuccessfully to overcome his alcoholism, he died in an automobile accident at age 44.

Lee Krasner (1908–1984)

Born in Brooklyn, Lee Krasner studied at The Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. From 1935-1943 she worked for the WPA Federal Art Project. In 1937 she enrolled in the Hans Hofmann School of Art and joined the American Abstract Artists. After she and Pollock married and moved to Springs, she developed her Little Image series, a highly original allover approach to abstraction, and a series of innovative collages made of recycled earlier paintings and drawings. Her later works include exuberant gestural abstractions and more hard-edge imagery, as well as another collage series in the mid 1970s. She died at age 75 in New York Hospital.

_{Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, in a photograph by Hans Namuth, 1950. Courtesy of Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.}

_{Lee Krasner’s painting boots. Courtesy of Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.}

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Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner moved from New York City to East Hampton in 1945, just as New York was emerging as the center of vanguard art. Pollock was already acknowledged as a leader among the nascent Abstract Expressionists, but personal and professional pressures aggravated his emotional instability and problem drinking. Krasner suggested they try country living temporarily, but Pollock decided the move should be permanent.

The property, which overlooks Accabonac Creek in the hamlet of Springs, was originally a fisherman’s homestead. Soon after arriving, the newly-married artists had major breakthroughs, and both began to create allover abstract compositions inspired in part by their rural surroundings. In a converted storage barn, Pollock painted many of his most famous poured canvases, using liquid house paint to express what he described as “memories arrested in space” and “energy and motion made visible.” Nature-derived imagery is found in many of the paintings both artists created here, including Krasner’s The Seasons, Cobalt Night, and August Petals. Pollock’s Accabonac Creek and Sounds in the Grass series, as well as poured paintings like Sea Change, Summertime, and Ocean Greyness, reflect his subjective responses to natural phenomena.

After Pollock was killed in an automobile accident in 1956, Krasner used the barn studio until her own death in 1984. There she painted her Earth Green and Night Journeys series, and made the colorful gestures from paintings such as Gaea, Portrait in Green and Memory of Love, that remain on the walls. Their home is maintained as Krasner left it, with all their furnishings and personal possessions, including their library and phonograph record collection. One original early painting by Pollock and prints by both artists are on display.

IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NATIONAL TRUST