Lee Krasner

Re-Echo

Re-Echo (1957) is one of seventeen paintings from Lee Krasner’s Earth Green series from the late 1950s. Re-Echo was among the first that Krasner painted in this series and is an example of the artist’s stylistic shift following the sudden death of her husband, Jackson Pollock, in the late summer of 1956. The title emphasizes this moment of change, when Krasner was able to move away from Pollock’s aesthetic influence and return to her own creative voice. The canvas is dense with rounded, flesh-colored forms, which are dotted with smaller shapes suggestive of fruit and foliage. These suggestions of life, however, are balanced with the shadow of mortality. The inclusion of ocher and brown that fill the negative spaces of Re-Echo functions as a reminder of the inevitability of death and decay. Re-Echo is a painting of sensitivity and nuance, in which Krasner celebrates the possibilities of the future through loss and grief.