This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
Interview between Lee Krasner and Andrew Forge. Insert for New Comment, 13th October 1965: 8 - 8.30 p.m. Krasner: ,..he did bring Cubism and this was a revelation. He had I would say the enthusiasm and the seriousness with which he approached a painting was about the best I got from Hoffman. He had a marvelous enthusiasm and he could somehow or other get - get me to feel - an excitement about painting. It certainly was a far cry from what I had at the academy. Forge: During the war when there were many European artists in New York, did you have much direct contact with them? Krasner: I remember I was a member of a group called The American Abstract Artists, and both Leger and Mondrian were there one year, and they were invited and were partaking in this exhibition. I remember that kind of excitement - to meet Leger and to meet Mondrian and to be exhibiting with them - very exciting. Forge: Now the American Abstract Artists - this was a sort of underground opposition in movement as I understand it, to the current tendency of social realism. Krasner: That's right. Forge: And you were involved with this at the beginning, were you? Krasner: Very much so. Participated, in fact, the museum of modern art - a group of us. There were about a half a dozen of us that were exciting and our cry at that point was "Show American art". So we were in that sense a group that were fighting to push forth a so called abstract art, and to show the Americans that [[note]] Whitechapel [[/note]]