Primary Series

In the early 1960s, Krasner allowed color to burst back into her painting. Like the “Night Journeys,” Another Storm has a limited palette, but the subdued umber has given way to a blazing alizarin crimson. When Krasner broke her right arm, she taught herself to work with her left, squirting point directly from the tube and using the fingertips of her right hand to guide the movements. This resulted in more tactile works, such as Through Blue and Icarus. In the years that followed, Krasner's gestures would become looser, more calligraphic, with bold forms somersaulting across the canvas in dissonant hues.

Krasner's colors in this series feel exuberant, alluding to her artistic hero Matisse, who declared that “with color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.” Her confidence in this period may well have come from the survey of her work that was organized by curator Bryan Robertson at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1965; this was her first exhibition in a public institution, and was met with very positive reviews.