Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s until 2011), she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. Frankenthaler began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as color field. Born in Manhattan, she was influenced by Greenberg, Hans Hofmann, and Jackson Pollock's paintings. Her work has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions, including a 1989 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and been exhibited worldwide since the 1950s. In 2001, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Frankenthaler had a home and studio in Darien, Connecticut.

Work
Paintings
Frankenthaler's official artistic career as a painter was launched in 1952 with the exhibition of Mountains and Sea. Throughout the 1950s, her works tended to be centered compositions. In 1957, Frankenthaler began to experiment with linear shapes and more organic, sun-like, rounded forms.

In the 1960s, her style shifted towards the exploration of symmetrical paintings, as she began to place strips of colors near the edges of her paintings. Her style grew to be more simplified. She began to make use of single stains and blots of solid color against white backgrounds, often in the form of geometric shapes. In 1960, the term color field painting was used to describe the work of Frankenthaler. In general, this term refers to the application of large areas, or fields, of color to the canvas. This style was characterized by the use of hues that were similar in tone or intensity, as well as large formats and simplified compositions, all of which are qualities descriptive of Frankenthaler's work from the 1960s onward. The color field artists differed from abstract expressionists in their attempted erasure of emotional, mythic, and religious content. Beginning in 1963, Frankenthaler began to use acrylic paints rather than oil paints because they allowed for both opacity and sharpness when put on the canvas.

By the 1970s, she had done away with the soak stain technique entirely, preferring thicker paint that allowed her to employ bright colors almost reminiscent of Fauvism. Throughout the 1970s, Frankenthaler explored the joining of areas of the canvas through the use of modulated hues, and experimented with large, abstract forms.

Her work in the 1980s was characterized as much calmer, with its use of muted colors and relaxed brushwork. "Once one's true talent begins to emerge, one is freer in a way but less free in another way, since one is a captive of this necessity and deep urge".

Works on paper
While she is best known for her large-scale canvases, her works on paper constitute a significant and dynamic aspect of her oeuvre. These works, spanning drawings, watercolors, gouaches, and prints, reveal her innovative approach to color, form, and medium, offering intimate insights into her creative process. Frankenthaler's works on paper are not mere preparatory studies but stand as fully realized expressions of her artistic vision, showcasing her mastery of fluidity, transparency, and improvisation.

Frankenthaler's engagement with paper began in her youth and continued through her studies at Bennington College. Her early drawings from the 1940s, often executed in charcoal, ink, or pastel, display a lyrical abstraction with fluid lines and organic forms. These works reflect her exploration of automatism and her interest in artists like Arshile Gorky and Joan Miró.

By the 1950s, Frankenthaler began experimenting with watercolor and gouache, mediums that allowed her to explore the translucency and spontaneity that would define her mature style. Her invention of the soak-stain technique in 1952 had a profound impact on her works on paper. She adapted this method to paper, pouring diluted paint onto unprimed surfaces, allowing colors to bleed and merge.

During the 1960s, Frankenthaler's works on paper became increasingly ambitious, paralleling the scale and complexity of her canvases. She embraced a variety of techniques, including acrylic, watercolor, and ink, often combining them in single compositions. Her paper works from this period, exhibit bold color fields and gestural marks, with a balance of control and spontaneity.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Frankenthaler's works on paper grew more diverse and experimental, incorporating collage elements, stencils, and mixed media. These works highlight her willingness to push the boundaries of the medium, treating paper as a space for both delicate nuance and robust experimentation.

In the later 1980s, Frankenthaler's works on paper became more immediate. With this immediacy she allowed and welcomed the risk of imperfection more so than with her painting. This became a means of discovery that introduced new energy into all aspects of her art. Her From the Turret series of works on paper were inspired by the view from the turret of her Connecticut studio. The stormy landscape in From the Turret IX was painted with immediacy and evokes a blue sea with a cloudy and windy sky.

In her later years, Frankenthaler's works on paper retained their vitality while adopting a more introspective tone. Her watercolors and acrylics from the 1990s, feature color washes and subtle gradients, evoking landscapes or emotional states.

Frankenthaler's late works on paper often blur the line between drawing and painting, as seen in her use of colored pencils and crayons alongside fluid washes. These pieces convey a sense of intimacy and directness, reflecting her lifelong commitment to exploring the expressive potential of her materials.

Prints
Frankenthaler recognized a need to continually challenge herself to develop as an artist. For this reason, in 1961, she began to experiment with printmaking at the Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), a lithographic workshop in West Islip, Long Island. Frankenthaler collaborated with Tatyana Grosman in 1961 to create her first prints.

In 1976, Frankenthaler began to work within the medium of woodcuts. She collaborated with Kenneth E. Tyler. The first piece they created together was Essence Mulberry (1977), a woodcut that used eight different colors. Essence Mulberry was inspired by two sources: the first was an exhibition of fifteenth century woodcuts that Frankenthaler saw on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the second being a mulberry tree that grew outside of Tyler's studio.

Frankenthaler completed a print entitled Earth Slice in 1978, appropriately titled due to its earthy tones and allusions of geological layers. Earth Slice is among the most experimental intaglio prints produced by her. She began experimenting with the image in December 1976 and completed work on the subject in 1978, producing numerous working proofs which show her aesthetic decision-making process. The print combines soft-ground etching, sugar-lift etching, and aquatint techniques, executed on Mauve handmade paper. The composition features earthy tones-browns, ochres, and hints of green-suggesting a natural landscape or terrain. The fluid, organic forms and textural qualities evoke the essence of land and earth, reflecting Frankenthaler's mastery in blending abstraction with elements of the natural world.

From 1985 to 1987, Frankenthaler made a series of ten prints at Tyler Graphics, Ltd. The catalogue of prints she made at Tyler Graphics includes: Blue Current (1987), Tribal Sign (1987), Ochre Dust (1987), Tiger's Eye (1987), In the Wings (1987), Corot's Mark (1987), Walking Rain (1987), Sudden Snow (1987), Day One (1987), and Yellow Jack (1987). These prints were exhibited in Helen Frankenthaler Prints: 1985-1987 at Tyler Graphics, Mount Kisco, New York (March 14-April 10, 1987) and then traveled to LA Louver, Los Angeles, CA (June 20-July 25, 1987).

In 1995, Frankenthaler and Tyler collaborated again, creating The Tales of Genji, a series of six woodcut prints. To create woodcuts with a resonance similar to Frankenthaler's painterly style, she painted her plans onto the wood itself, making maquettes. The Tales of Genji took nearly three years to complete. Frankenthaler then went on to create Madame Butterfly, a print that employed one hundred and two different colors and forty-six woodblocks.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2025