Helen
Frankenthaler
1928 – 2011
“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.”
Bio
Helen Frankenthaler was a pioneering American painter and printmaker associated with Color Field painting and post-painterly abstraction. Like several of the exponents of Abstract Expressionism, she was concerned with the forms and energies latent in nature. Highly influenced by Jackson Pollock, she changed her entire method of painting after watching him lay his unstretched canvases on the floor. This revolutionary approach to painting appealed to Frankenthaler, and she has taken this process one step further: she developed a groundbreaking technique of pouring thinned paint onto unprimed canvas, allowing pigment to soak into the surface and unify image and material. Her seminal 1952 work Mountains and Sea marked a shift in modern painting, emphasizing openness, subtle color, and flatness. A key figure in the New York School, Frankenthaler helped define a new era of abstraction and influenced a generation of artists with her innovative approach to form and process.
Helen Frankenthaler
Midnight
32" x 15"
Original aquatint and dry point printed in five colors (blue, black, red, pink, green) on Magnani wove paper