Background
Helen Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States; the daughter of Alfred and Martha (Lowenstein) Frankenthaler.
1961
New York City, New York, United States
Helen Frankenthaler in her studio in front of Swan Lake Series (in progress).
1969
New York City, New York, United States
Frankenthaler in her East 83rd Street studio in New York.
1969
New York City, New York, United States
Frankenthaler working in her studio in East 83rd Street and Third Avenue in New York.
1972
New York City, New York, United States
Helen Frankenthaler working with Bill Goldston at Universal Limited Art Editions in New York. (photo by Edward Oleksak).
1980
225 South St, Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States
Frankenthaler at the opening reception of "Helen Frankenthaler Prints: 1961–1979" at the Clark Art Institute on April 11, 1980.
2002
Helen Frankenthaler with President Bush.
108 E 89th St, New York City, New York, United States
Frankenthaler studied at Dalton School from 1943 to 1944.
1 College Dr, Bennington, Vermont, United States
Helen studied at Bennington College from 1944 to 1949.
(20 Notecards and Envelopes. This sublime set of notecards...)
20 Notecards and Envelopes. This sublime set of notecards showcases ten of artist Helen Frankenthaler's luminous Abstract Expressionist paintings from the 1960s.
https://www.amazon.com/Helen-Frankenthaler-Notes-Notecards-Envelopes/dp/1452145806/?tag=2022091-20
2016
Helen Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States; the daughter of Alfred and Martha (Lowenstein) Frankenthaler.
Frankenthaler was sent to the Dalton School in 1943, where she studied under the Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. A year later she enrolled in the Bennington College, where she studied under the direction of Paul Feeley and graduated it in 1949. Then in 1949, Helen studied privately with an Australian-born painter Wallace Harrison and with Hans Hofmann in 1950.
Frankenthaler's professional exhibition career began in 1950, when Adolph Gottlieb selected her painting "Beach", 1950 for the exhibition titled "Fifteen Unknowns: Selected by Artists of the Kootz Gallery". Also in 1950, she met Clement Greenberg, who was one of her most important influences and with whom she had a five-year relationship. Due to him, Helen was introduced to the New York art scene. Greenberg included her in the Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition that he curated in 1964.
Helen's first solo exhibition was held at New York's Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1951. The same year Helen was also included in the landmark exhibition 9th St. Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture. In the fall of 1952, she made her legendary painting "Mountains and Sea", the first work she created using her celebrated soak-stain technique. Then in 1957, Frankenthaler began to experiment with linear shapes and more organic, sun-like, rounded forms in her works.
She had her first museum retrospective at the Jewish Museum in New York City in 1960. Helen, in 1961, took part in the American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York. In the early 1960s she began to use acrylics, and the areas of raw canvas began to assume much greater spatial significance. Frankenthaler achieved large washes of bright color in acrylic paintings like "Canyon", 1965, which reveal the possibilities of this new material.
She also showed her work internationally, exhibiting at the Venice Biennale in 1966 and at the United States Pavilion at the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal. Throughout the 1970s, she explored the joining of areas of the canvas through the use of modulated hues, and experimented with large, abstract forms. In 1971, Frankenthaler traveled to the American Southwest. During those two trips she made in the mid-1970s resulted in "Desert Pass", 1976, and several other works capturing the colors and tones of the Southwestern landscape.
In 1976, she began to work within the medium of woodcuts. Helen collaborated with Kenneth E. Tyler. They created together was "Essence of Mulberry", 1977, a woodcut that used eight different colors. In 1995, the pair collaborated again, creating "The Tales of Genji", a series of six woodcut prints. Then Frankenthaler created "Madame Butterfly", a print that employed one hundred and two different colors and forty-six woodblocks.
She continued making art during the 1980s and 1990s, up through the last years of her life. Frankenthaler's works in the 1980s were characterized as much calmer, with its use of muted colors and relaxed brushwork. In addition to painting, she experimented with a variety of other media, including clay and steel sculpture, even designing the sets and costumes for England's Royal Ballet. Among her later works were "Warming Trend", 2002, "Ebbing", 2002, "Cloud Burst", 2002, "Geisha", 2003 and "Weeping Crabapple", 2009. In addition, Helen taught at Harvard, Princeton, Yale and New York Universities.
(20 Notecards and Envelopes. This sublime set of notecards...)
2016(Works on Paper 1949-1984.)
1995Mountains and Sea
1952Jacob's Ladder
1957Pink Lady
1963Interior Landscape
1964Nature Abhors a Vacuum
1973Overture
1992Cloud Burst
2002Cool Summer
1962New York Bamboo
1957Star Gazing
1989Eden
1956Chairman of the Board
1971Skywriting
1996The Sightseers
1951Untitled
1960Almost August Series #2
1978Aerie
1995Russian River
1995Southern Exposure
2002M
1977Summer Bronze
1983Grotto Azura
1963Sesame
1970Minerals
1976Warming Trend
2002Fiesta
1973Untitled
1962Lush Spring
1975Frankenthaler was influenced by Abstract Expressionist painting practices, but was concerned with developing a close relationship between image and surface and with the specifics of the medium of paint. She invented the "soak-stain" technique, in which she poured turpentine-thinned paint onto canvas, producing luminous color washes that appeared to merge with the canvas and deny any hint of three-dimensional illusionism.
Quotations:
"There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about."
"In relations with people, as in art, if you always stick to style, manners, and what will work, and you're never caught off guard, then some beautiful experiences never happen."
"Every canvas is a journey all its own."
"One really beautiful wrist motion, that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it. It looks as if it were born in a minute."
"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image."
"We would sift through every inch of what it was that worked, or if it didn't, and wonder what was effective in it, in terms of paint, the subject matter, the size, the drawing."
Frankenthaler served on the National Council on the Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1985 to 1992. In 1990, she was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1994.
Frankenthaler had a five-year relationship with Clement Greenberg. In 1958, she married Robert Motherwell, with whom she divorced in 1971. Helen had two stepdaughters, Jeannie Motherwell and Lise Motherwell. In 1994, she married Stephen M. DuBrul, Jr.