AII - Artist - Frankenthaler, Helen

Studied: Dalton School with Rufino Tamayo
Bennington College with Paul Feeley
Art Students’ League Vaclav Vytlacil
She also studied with Hans Hofmann.

The daughter of a Supreme Court Justice, Helen Frankenthaler was born in New York City in 1928. A second generation Abstract Expressionist, she was especially influenced by her teacher Hans Hofmann as well as Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock. During a 1952 trip to the Canadian Maritimes she created abstract landscapes of Nova Scotia that merged the fluid transparency of watercolor and the gestural quality of Abstract Expressionism.  Back in New York she began to drip thinned oil paint onto unsized, unprimed canvas laid on her studio floor. This resulted in a purely optical image as opposed to a three-dimensional image. On October 26, 1952 she painted Mountains and Sea in one day.  Its diaphanous clouds of color and soak-stain technique became the hallmarks of her art. Her unique approach influenced Washington’s Color Field painters, especially Morris Louis. Frankenthaler’s principle dealer has been Andre Emmerich. She has received solo exhibitions at the Whitney in 1969 and The Metropolitan Muserum of Art in 1973.

Bibliography:
Baur; Friedman; Goodrich and Baur; Hunter; Janis and Blesh

Piece 1

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