New York — This New York Fashion Week, Lee Krasner’s paintings serve as inspiration for designer Ulla Johnson’s Spring/Summer 2025 collection, which made its runway debut on September 8. This collaboration placed Krasner’s iconic paintings “Comet” (1970), “Portrait in Green” (1966), and “Palingenesis” (1971) in prints on dresses, trousers, coats, and two-piece sets.

Johnson’s affinity for Krasner goes beyond their shared background as New Yorkers and children of immigrants. Of this collaboration, the designer shared: “[Krasner] talked about wanting her work to breathe and live… Women walk these clothes into life; it’s not a garment, it becomes part of the wearer.”

Writer, Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women — Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters an the Movement that Changed Modern Art – expands on the collaboration with her piece On Transformation.

On Transformation

By Mary Gabriel

Those who create introduce sounds, words, and visions into our lives that have never before existed. If what they make speaks to us, it is because it is true. We recognize it immediately as part of the world we inhabit, internal and external. It is that world renewed, enriched, made intriguing again, made beautiful again. We emerge from the encounter breathless, awakened, transformed. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we are changed forever.

That is the artist’s gift to us. They open new pathways for us to travel, but more importantly, they invite us to join them in their work. By listening to a piece of music or living with a painting or wearing a designer’s creation, we become part of their story. We contribute to it by our participation. And that is what art is truly about. It is not a matter of simply knowing; it is a matter of being. Because art isn’t a thing, it is a life.

A painter might begin with a palette full of color, a designer might begin with a mood or feeling, but it is a lifetime of experiences – and the courage to express them — that turn those materials into art. The artist puts everything they are into their work and then they go in search of inspiration to enhance who they are and what they have learned. They look to nature, they look to other artists and artisans, they look at the hallowed and the profane. They walk through whatever door is opened to them that might end in discovery because that is where the magic happens.

Painter Lee Krasner experienced that when she opened herself up to nature. Sitting at her home at The Springs in East Hampton, surrounded by fields of brush and birdsong, with Accabonac Creek meandering at the edge of her farmhouse property, she listened to nature’s contrapuntal symphony until she dissolved into it – the sounds, but also the smells, the feel of the air on her skin, the landscape, the light.

The realization completed her. It pervaded her spirit. It was a revelation she had been waiting for. Back in her studio, it was her arms and hands that moved across the great expanse of linen but it was nature directing the lush and fertile images. Vines, flowers, wombs. Joy.

Nature has long been a fundamental part of Ulla Johnson’s creations. Her designs are celebrations of pure colors, patterns, and textures. It is no surprise then, that Krasner’s work spoke to her. It is also no surprise that, as an artist having experienced it, Johnson made Lee’s work part of her own. Inspiration, collaboration, transformation is the very essence of creation.

Ulla has taken paintings, among them Lee’s fully abstract, gestural masterpiece about regeneration Palingenesis, and given them new life by them on the body. As a result, a Lee Krasner is no longer something we look at, it’s something we live in.

It is alive with the spirit of the two women who created it, women who never knew each other but who are part of a great and glorious continuum of art and life. It is there to be admired, immersed in, worn. It is there to inspire the next artist, who will make their own re-creation. It is there to inspire those who see it to live their own life as a work of art.

ABOUT ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY
Artists Rights Society is the preeminent licensing agency for visual artists in the United States. Representing iconic artists such as Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollock, and Henri Matisse, our vast network represents over 122,000 artists worldwide, and we specialize in harnessing the vibrant power of art to unlock the creative potential of brands, and excel in cultivating dynamic partnerships that drive brand growth and inspire lasting connections. Learn more at www.arsny.com or follow @artistsrightssociety on Instagram.