The 2 Broadway murals are a pair of untitled decorative mosaicmurals by the American artist Lee Krasner completed in 1959 and located at 2 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, New York.[1] They were commissioned in 1958 by the New York-based real estate company Uris Brothers, which was headquartered at and owned the office building at 2 Broadway. Krasner designed and completed the murals in collaboration with her nephew, Roland Stein.
Both murals are abstract and consist of colorful interlocking planes made from glass tesserae in green, blue, gold, black, and crimson, echoing the dynamism of Krasner's Abstract Expressionist painting style. The larger mural, installed above the Broadway entrance, is 86 feet by 12 feet, while the smaller one is 15 feet by 15 feet and placed above the back entrance facing Broad Street.
Background
By the early 1950s, Lee Krasner was one of the few female American abstract artists associated with the New York School, a group which included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko, among others.[2] However, her achievements and work were often eclipsed by the fame of Pollock, whom she married in 1945.[3] Following Pollock's untimely death in a drunk driving incident in Long Island in 1956, Krasner's style of painting evolved into a more expressive and gestural style. By 1957, Krasner had begun working in Pollock's former barn studio located near their house in the Springs, allowing her to shift her painting practice toward mural scale.[4]
Lee Krasner, Untitled Mural Study, 1940. Gouache on paper, 17 x 22 inches. Study for a mural Krasner did for the WPA, an American New Deal agency.
In 1958, Bob Friedman, who served as vice-president of the New York-based real estate company Uris Brothers, commissioned Lee Krasner to create a pair of mosaicmurals at the company's corporate headquarters located at 2 Broadway in Lower Manhattan.[5] Friedman had previously seen and admired a mosaic table at Krasner's home, which she had executed in 1947 using tesserae left over from her husband Jackson Pollock's work at the Works Progress Administration. He was also familiar with some of the large-scale murals Lee Krasner made for the WPA in the 1940s.[6]:107[5]
Commission
The second mural, partially concealed by a bricked wall, installed above the back entrance to 2 Broadway. View from Marketfield Street.
The office building at 2 Broadway was designed by Emery Roth & Sons and constructed between 1958 and 1959. Krasner designed the murals in collaboration with her nephew, Roland Stein, and the works were installed in 1959.[7]:16 Both murals are abstract, depicting an arrangement of colorful planes in green, gold, black, and crimson hues made using glass tesserae.[8] Due to union laws, Krasner was not allowed to work with the material directly and had to instruct workmen to break the glass and then arrange it on the surface of each mural.[6]:107 According to the American art historian Barbara Rose, working on the collagemaquettes in preparation for the murals provided Krasner "with a means of translating her winged, floral, and organic forms into monumental abstractions on a public scale".[9]
The larger work, measuring 86 feet by 12 feet, was installed above the entryway facing Broadway while the smaller one, measuring 15 feet by 15 feet, is above the Broad Street entrance.[10] The interjecting colorful planes of both murals evoked the dynamic visual compositions of Lee Krasner's 1950s painting practice.[1] Scholar Emily Warner describes the work as "an explosion of swooping forms, splintered tiles, and craggy edges".[11] The work's composition has been compared to Krasner's 1955 painting Bald Eagle where "cluster of irregular swatches" are seen distributed "rhythmically" across the space of the composition.[12]:519 According to art historian Marcia Tucker, the front mural at 2 Broadway "remains one of the few successful, architecturally appropriate exterior wall pieces to have been done on this scale".[7]:16
