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Helen Frankenthaler Biography
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:Helen
Frankenthaler
(born Dec. 12, 1928, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. painter. She studied with Rufino
Tamayo in high school and at Bennington College, then returned to her
native New York City and joined the "second generation" of Abstract Expressionists. Influenced by Jackson Pollock and Arshile
Gorky, she developed a style featuring abstract colour combinations
within large expanses of bare canvas. She perfected the technique of
colour staining, producing diaphanous colour by thinning the oils and
letting them soak into the unprimed canvas. In the 1960s she began to
use acrylic paints. Though abstract, many of her paintings (e.g., Ocean Desert, 1975) evoke landscapes and are noted for their lyricism. Her work influenced the colour-field painters Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. She was married to Robert Motherwell from 1958 to 1971.
For more information on Helen Frankenthaler, visit Britannica.com.
Art Encyclopedia:Helen Frankenthaler
(b New York, 12 Dec 1928). American painter and printmaker. She
studied with Rufino Tamayo while at Dalton School, New York, with Paul
Feeley (b 1910) at Bennington College, VT (1946-9), and privately
with Wallace Harrison in 1949 and Hans Hofmann in 1950. In that year
she met Clement Greenberg, David Smith, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner,
Willem de Kooning and others. Like several of the exponents of ABSTRACT
EXPRESSIONISM she was concerned with the forms and energies latent in
nature. In the mythology of technical breakthrough that was part of the
culture of the New York School, her work Mountains and Sea (1952;
artist's col.; see fig.) has an established place. Extending Pollock's
method of painting on unprimed canvases on the floor, she allowed
thinner pigments to soak directly into the canvas. This created a closer
relationship between image and surface, the weave of the raw canvas
being visible within the painted image. At the same time the visibility
of the canvas beneath the painted surface negated the sense of illusion
and depth. It was a device that called attention to both the material
and the nature of the medium. The technique also generated a new range
of liquid-like atmospheric effects reminiscent of the watercolours of
John Marin. Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, the leading figures of a
group sometimes known as the WASHINGTON COLOR PAINTERS, were among
several painters who saw Mountains and Sea in 1953 and developed
its implications in their own work. Louis in particular pursued the
possibilities of the technique of 'staining' colour into the canvas.
Biography:Helen Frankenthaler
The American painter Helen Frankenthaler (born 1928) was a
central figure in the development of color-field abstraction during the
late 1950s and the 1960s. Helen Frankenthaler was
born on December 12, 1928, in New York City. As a painter her earliest
training was with the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo at the Dalton School
in New York. She studied with Paul Feeley at Bennington College,
where she received her bachelor of arts degree in 1948. She then lived
in New York City, although she traveled extensively throughout Europe.
She was married to the painter Robert Motherwell. In the early
1950s Frankenthaler participated in several important group shows and
had her first solo exhibition in 1951. She exhibited regularly during
this decade and by 1960 had begun to receive national and international
recognition. Large exhibitions of her work were held at the Jewish
Museum in New York City in 1960 and at Bennington College in 1962. In
1969 she enjoyed a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American
Art. Frankenthaler's style developed in ways counter to the better-known trends of abstract painting during the 1950s. Inspired by Jackson Pollock's black-and-white paintings of 1951, she began to stain thinned pigment into unprimed canvas. The paintings which resulted possessed a delicate, liquid appearance, and their surfaces were devoid of any hint of physical pigment. By contrast, most abstract painting of this time took inspiration from Willem de Kooning's work and emphasized dense surface face textures and aggressive brushwork.
But Frankenthaler's direction gradually became influential. In 1953 she
introduced the stain technique to Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, both
of whom adopted and developed it within the personal structures of
their own painting. Along with Frankenthaler, these two painters
profoundly influenced the direction of nonpainterly color abstraction in
the 1960s. The painting which Frankenthaler showed to Louis and Noland is called Mountains and Sea
(1952). It clearly reveals the advantages of the staining technique,
particularly in the flowing spontaneity of the color areas. Because the
thinned pigment soaks naturally into the canvas ground, passages from
one color to the next are experienced within a continuous optical field
rather than as abrupt
jumps from one discrete plane to another. In other words, the space is
generated within the acknowledged limits of the two-dimensional canvas
surface. As its title suggests, Mountains and Sea bears a lingering resemblance to a natural landscape. In 1989 the editor-in-chief of American Artist referred to Mountains and Sea
as one of the four "landmark paintings in the history of contemporary
art." In her work after the early 1950s, Frankenthaler became more
abstract in her imagery and devoted increasing attention to the
development of her lyrical color sensibility. During
the 1960s and 1970s, Frankenthaler continued to develop her own style,
one which emphasizes the notion of beauty. She explored the use of acrylic
paints, and her work during this era tended to be larger, simpler, and
more geometric than previous pieces. Still, her goal was to capture
emotion through the use of color without using scenes or subjects. In
the late 1970s she explored cubist ideas of space that she had learned
in art school. During the late 1980s critics began to realize more
fully how significantly Frankenthaler's work had contributed to the art
world. They credit her with many technical achievements and approaches
to the use of color during her four decades of creativity. Retrospective
exhibitions of her work began to tour museums, even as she continued to
create. In late 1996 Eric Gibson noted in ARTnews that her latest round of prints, Spring Run Monotypes, "convey a wide array of sentiments that were barely noticeable in her earlier works." Critics
consider Frankenthaler one of the most highly regarded painters of the
20th century. Though she has experimented with a variety of techniques,
her style has remained truly individual. She told Newsweek in
1989, "I continue to do the work I do." This beautiful and poetic work
has assured her a place among the masters of contempory art. Further Reading For Helen Frankenthaler's position in relation to postwar American painting see Barbara Rose, American Art since 1900: A Critical History (1967). Two excellent retrospectives of her work are John Elderfield, Frankenthaler, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997; and Ruth E. Fine, Helen Frankenthaler: Prints, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993. Interviews with Frankenthaler are featured in Bradley W. Bloch, "Pigments of the Imagination," New Leader, September 4, 1989; and Carter Ratcliff, "Living Color," Vogue, June 1989. |
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