HELEN FRANKENTHALER
Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) is among the most important and influential recent American artists. Her achievements in painting, watercolour and printmaking impacted the methods of many other artists, such as Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis. She broke onto the New York art scene in 1952 with her now legendary painting 'Mountains and Sea' which both stayed true to the great European tradition by showing a deep respect for the late paintings of Paul Cezanne but also showed a way forward for modern American painting.
Frankenthaler became associated with Post-Painterly Abstraction that emerged in America in the 1950s and 60s, and her rich and innovative use of colour made her a pioneer of Colour Field painting. She was married to the Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell, but despite her close association with the movement her technique was quite different from theirs. Avoiding painterly brushstrokes, she stained the unprimed canvas or paper, as well as pouring pigment on directly. As a result, the effect created by the expansion and absorption of colour remained partly beyond her control. Though each work is unique, they do share certain characteristics, such as the record of gestural movement seen in Jackson Pollock’s Action painting, and the large expanses of colour used by her friend and contemporary Mark Rothko.
Although Frankenthaler’s paintings are abstract in form, the circles, squares and stripes that frequently appear are highly evocative and ambiguous. The titles allude to the natural world, but they are also open to interpretation for the viewer to perceive different references. The spontaneous fluidity of form and colour in Frankenthaler’s compositions conveys a delicacy and serenity that sets her apart from her contemporaries. Aside from some smaller more intimate works, her pictures are typically large and evoke a unique sense of openness and enveloping calm.