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Helen Frankenthaler
"There are no rules... that is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules, that is what invention is about."
has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century.
She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting.
Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways.
Towards a New Climate, 1957
Oil on canvas 70 x 98 in. (177.8 x 248.9 cm)
The Bay, 1963
Acrylic on canvas 80 3/4 x 81 3/4 inches (205 x 208 cm) Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan
A Green Thought in a Green Shade, 1981
Acrylic on canvas 119 x 156 1/2 inches (302.3 x 397.5 cm)
Grey Fireworks, 1982
Acrylic on canvas 72 x 118 1/2 inches (182.9 x 301 cm) Private Collection
Close up, Grey Fireworks, 1982
Untitled, 1962
Oil on paper 19 1/8 x 24 7/8 inches (48.6 x 63.2 cm)
Canal Street XIV, 1987
Acrylic on paper 24 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches (62.2 x 100.3 cm)
Kiss, 2003
Acrylic on paper 8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm)
Cool Summer, 1962
Oil on canvas, 69 ¾ × 120 inches (177.2 × 304.8 cm) (C) 9018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Nature Abhors a Vaccum, 1973
Acrylic on canvas, 103 ½ × 112 inches (262.9 x 284.5 cm), National Gallery of Art, Washington, © 2018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation,
Syzygy, 1987
Acrylic on canvas, 88 / X 59 ½ inches (224.2 x 151.1 cm)| © 2018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, inc. Artists kiants society Aro. New york
A line, color, shapes, spaces, all do one thing for and within themselves, and yet do something else, in relation to everything that is going on within the four sides [of the canvas]. A line is a line, but [also] is a color. . . . It does this here, but that there. The canvas surface is flat and yet the space extends for miles. What a lie, what trickery—how beautiful is the very idea of painting. —Helen Frankenthaler
End of Summer, 1995
Acrylic on paper, 78 × 78 inches (198.1 × 198.1 cm) 9094 1een Trankentna pr rAlinearan Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Untitled, 1996
Acrylic and charcoal on paper, 40 ¼ × 60 ⅛ inches (102.2 × 152.7 cm) © 2024 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
“I’ve always worked on paper,” she noted in 1996, “but not conceived on the scale of my canvases. . . . The shift was a tremendous move for me.”
The paintings in the exhibition reveal her exploration of the material and compositional possibilities of working on paper: new kinds of chromatic juxtapositions and painterly gestures, often set down on a smoother surface than canvas.
At several earlier moments in her career, Frankenthaler had added more visibly dense brushstrokes and applications of pigment to the revolutionary soak-stain technique she had pioneered in the early 1950s. This approach became a constant in her late compositions. After working directly on the floor during the first four decades of her career, she began painting on large, waist-high tabletops, a concession to her age; the turn to painting on paper also coincided with her increased activity in printmaking.
"My pictures are full of climates, abstract climates, and not nature per se. But a feeling. And the feeling of an order that is associated more with nature. Nature in seasons, maybe; but nature in, well, an order. And I think art itself is order out of chaos." —Helen Frankenthaler
In her pioneering work of the 1950s, inspired by Jackson Pollock, Frankenthaler had poured both linear tracks and spreading areas of thinned paint onto unprimed canvas.
Challenged the established norms of brushwork and control. By allowing the paint to seep and bleed into the fabric, she embraced the unpredictable nature of the medium and introduced an element of spontaneity and freedom into her process. This unleashed a dynamic interplay of colours and forms, creating works that were vibrant, alive, and deeply expressive.