WINSTON-SALEM, NC.- Reynolda House Museum of American Art recently acquired “Birth,” a large-scale oil painting by Lee Krasner, one of American art’s most distinguished abstract expressionist painters. Museum Executive Director Allison Perkins announced the gift to an audience of more than 300 guests Friday, Oct. 10, at the museum’s annual black-tie fundraising gala, An Evening for Reynolda.

The painting is on view in the museum’s exhibition “Love and Loss,” which opens to the public today.

“Birth” is a gift from museum founding president Barbara Babcock Millhouse, who established the museum’s American art collection in 1967 with nine paintings. Millhouse is the granddaughter of R.J. Reynolds and Katharine Smith Reynolds, and daughter of Mary Reynolds and Charles Babcock. She was the driving force behind the museum’s nationally recognized collection that has grown to include masterworks of American painting, sculpture and photography by such artists as Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe and Gilbert Stuart, in addition to Krasner.

“Lee Krasner’s ‘Birth’ is a significant example of abstract expressionism, the first international art movement to have its roots in New York rather than Europe,” said Perkins. “This gift from our founding president Barbara Millhouse is an important addition to the collection at Reynolda House Museum of American Art. The museum – and our audiences who visit us in person or online – are fortunate to benefit from the generosity of such an esteemed collector.”

“Birth,” painted in 1956, is one of the first paintings Krasner created after the death of her husband, fellow abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, and is a vivid representation of her loss and rage. The canvas measures 83 inches tall by 48 inches wide and is marked by bold, expressive brushstrokes in thick black paint and pink flesh tones.

“Birth” makes it debut as a part of the Reynolda House collection, in an exhibition titled “Love and Loss.” The exhibition examines the power of art to transform individual loss into expressions of shared experience. In addition to “Birth,” the exhibition features three prints, one painting and one sculpture by artists responding directly to the recent death of a beloved child, spouse, sibling or friend. Reynolda House thanks its partner in presenting “Love and Loss,” the Northwest Area Health Education Center of Wake Forest School of Medicine and part of the NC AHEC Program. “Love and Loss” is on view through Oct. 18, 2015.