Helen Frankenthaler is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. She 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 AbstractionPost-painterly abstraction is a term created by art critic Clement Greenberg as the title for an exhibit he curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964, which subsequently travelled to the Walker Art Center and the Art Gallery of Toronto....
exhibition curated by
Clement GreenbergClement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as
Color FieldColor Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists...
. Born in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, she was influenced by
Hans HofmannHans Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter.-Biography:Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich...
,
Jackson PollockPaul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
's paintings and by Clement Greenberg. Her work has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions; including a 1989 retrospective at the
Museum of Modern ArtThe Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Her work has been exhibited worldwide since the 1950s. In 2001, she was awarded the
National Medal of ArtsThe National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. It is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people. Honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the...
.
Frankenthaler has a home and studio in
Darien, ConnecticutDarien is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. A relatively small community on Connecticut's "Gold Coast", the population was 20,732 at the 2010 census. Darien was listed at #9 at CNN Money's list of "top-earning towns" in the United States as of 2011...
.
Early life and education
Helen Frankenthaler comes from a Jewish family. She is the youngest daughter of Alfred Frankenthaler, who was a justice on the New York State Supreme Court. Her nephew is the artist/photographer
Clifford RossClifford Ross is an American visual artist who has worked in multiple media, including sculpture, painting, photography and video. His work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of...
She studied at the Dalton School under
Rufino TamayoRufino Tamayo was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico. Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences....
and also at
Bennington CollegeBennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...
in Vermont. She was later married to fellow artist
Robert MotherwellRobert Motherwell American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston....
(1915–1991), from 1958 until they divorced in 1971.
Frankenthaler has been on the faculty of
Hunter CollegeHunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
.
Style and technique
Initially associated with
abstract expressionismAbstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
her career was launched in 1952 with the exhibition of
Mountains and Sea. This painting is large - measuring seven feet by ten feet - and has the effect of a watercolor, though it is painted in oils. In it, she introduced the technique of painting directly onto an unprepared canvas so that the material absorbs the colors. She heavily diluted the oil paint with turpentine so that the color would soak into the canvas. This technique, known as "soak stain" was used by
Jackson PollockPaul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
(1912–1956), and others; and was adopted by other artists notably Morris Louis (1912–1962), and
Kenneth NolandKenneth Noland was an American abstract painter. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School...
(1924–2010), and launched the second generation of the
Color FieldColor Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists...
school of painting. This method would sometimes leave the canvas with a halo effect around each area to which the paint was applied but has a disadvantage in that the oil in the paints will eventually cause the canvas to discolor and rot away.
Influences
One of her most important influences was
Clement GreenbergClement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
(1909–1994), an influential art and literary critic with whom she had a personal friendship and who included her in the
Post-Painterly AbstractionPost-painterly abstraction is a term created by art critic Clement Greenberg as the title for an exhibit he curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964, which subsequently travelled to the Walker Art Center and the Art Gallery of Toronto....
exhibition that he curated in 1964. Through Greenberg she was introduced to the New York art scene. Under his guidance she spent the summer of 1950 studying with
Hans HofmannHans Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter.-Biography:Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich...
(1880–1966), catalyst of the
Abstract Expressionist movementAbstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
.
The first Jackson Pollock show Frankenthaler saw was at the
Betty Parsons GalleryBetty Parsons, born Betty Bierne Pierson, was an American artist and art dealer known for her early promotion of Abstract Expressionism. She was known as "the den mother of Abstract Expressionism"...
in 1950. She had this to say about seeing Pollock's paintings
Autumn Rhythm, Number 30, 1950 (1950),
Number One,1950 (Lavender Mist) (1950):
"It was all there. I wanted to live in this land. I had to live there, and master the language."
In 1960 the term Color Field painting was used to describe the work of Frankenthaler. This style was characterized by large areas of a more or less flat single color. The Color Field artists set themselves apart from the Abstract Expressionists because they eliminated the emotional, mythic or the religious content and the highly personal and gestural and painterly application.
Some of her thoughts on painting:
"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." (In Barbara RoseBarbara Rose is an American art historian and art critic. She was educated at Smith College, Barnard College and Columbia University. She was married to artist Frank Stella between 1961 and 1969...
, Frankenthaler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1975, p. 85)
Additional reading
- Elderfield, John
John Elderfield was the Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 2003 to 2008.Elderfield studied the history of art at the University of Manchester and the University of Leeds...
. Helen Frankenthaler, 1989, Harry N. Abrams ISBN 0-8109-0916-2
- Helen Frankenthaler, After Mountains and Sea: Frankenthaler 1956-1959 (New York : Guggenheim Museum, ©1998.) ISBN 0-8109-6911-4 9780810969117 0892071974 9780892071975
- Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. p. 16; p. 37; pp. 142–145, York 1986. ISBN 0-87099-477-8
- Pollock, Griselda, "Killing Men and Dying Women". In: Orton, Fred and Pollock, Griselda (eds), Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed. London: Redwood Books, 1996. ISBN 0-7190-4398-0
- Wilkin, Karen
Karen Wilkin is a New York-based independent curator and art critic specializing in 20th century modernism. Educated at Barnard College and Columbia University, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, to Rome...
. Frankenthaler: Works on Paper 1949-1984, George BrazillerGeorge Braziller is an American book publisher and the founder of George Braziller, Inc., a firm known for its literary and artistic books and its publication of foreign authors....
(February 1985), ISBN 978-0-8076-1103-6
External links
- Biography from the Jewish Women's Archive
- Jacob's Ladder at MoMA
- Helen Frankenthaler Artwork Examples on AskART.
- Frankenthaler's New Way of Making Art, The Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2008
- Helen Frankenthaler represented by Knoedler & Company
- Lush Spring (1975) Phoenix Art Museum
The Phoenix Art Museum is the Southwest United States' largest art museum for visual art. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the museum is . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, Western...