Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler was born the youngest of three girls on December 12, 1928, in New York. Her family was well off, which allowed her to travel to museums and other art venues, igniting her interest in art and jumpstarting her career. Living in New York gave her opportunity to study under such artists as Rufino Tamayo, Paul Feeley, Wallace Harrison, and Hans Hofmann. She came to greatly admire Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Braque, and Kandinsky.

Her career benefited considerably when she met the art critic Clement Greenberg in 1949. He introduced her to the Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner. Frankenthaler described the first time she saw Pollock's work, in 1951: "It was as if I suddenly went to a foreign country but I didn't know the language, but had read enough and had a passionate interest, and was eager to live there. I wanted to live in this land; I had to live there, and master the language."¹ (1) She began to work on the floor, as Pollock did, pouring and spilling paint onto huge pieces of canvas that were usually left unprimed. She used Pollock's methods as a point of a departure, a way to expand her own stylistic tendencies. She extended them "by thinning down her medium so that the paint sank into and soaked through the canvas."²(2) As she said: "You could become a De Kooning disciple or satellite or mirror, but you could "depart" from Pollock."³(3) She was also, in fact, friends with Willem de Kooning.

Her most famous piece, "Mountains and Sea" (1952; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), was one of the first paintings that she executed on the floor and using her "staining" technique. She took the watercolor effect of works by Cézanne and John Marin and perfected it by thinning down and diluting the medium. "Mountains and Sea" influenced Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, who established the Color Field painting style, a movement pioneered by Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell, her husband of thirteen years.

C.J.

NOTES:

1. Barbara Rose, Helen Frankenthaler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1972), p. 29.

2. Ibid., p. 34.

3. John Elderfield, Helen Frankenthaler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), p. 39.

EXTENDED BIO

Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s until 2011), she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work.[1] Frankenthaler 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 Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as Color Field. Born in Manhattan, she was influenced by Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock'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 Art in New York City, and been exhibited worldwide since the 1950s. In 2001, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Frankenthaler had a home and studio in Darien, Connecticut.[2] Helen Frankenthaler was a New Yorker.[3] She was born in Manhattan on December 12, 1928. Her father was Alfred Frankenthaler, a respected New York State Supreme Court judge. Her mother, Martha (Lowenstein), had emigrated with her family from Germany to the United States shortly after she was born.[4] Her two sisters, Marjorie and Gloria, were six and five years older, respectively. Growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Frankenthaler absorbed the privileged background of a cultured and progressive intellectual family that encouraged all three daughters to prepare themselves for professional careers. Her nephew is the artist/photographer Clifford Ross.[5]

Frankenthaler studied at the Dalton School under Rufino Tamayo and also at Bennington College in Vermont. She met Clement Greenberg in 1950 and had a five-year relationship with him.[4] She was later married to fellow artist Robert Motherwell (1915–1991), from 1958 until they divorced in 1971.[3] Both born of wealthy parents, the pair was known as "the golden couple" and noted for their lavish entertaining.[4] She gained from him two stepdaughters, Jeannie Motherwell and Lise Motherwell.[4] She married Stephen M. DuBrul, Jr., an investment banker who served the Ford administration, in 1994.[4] Frankenthaler had been on the faculty of Hunter College.

REFERENCES

National Gallery of Art Retrieved August 17, 2010

Jump up ^ Web page titled "Helen Frankenthaler", at the "Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame" website, retrieved January 30, 2010

^ Jump up to: a b c Belz, Carl. "Helen Frankenthaler". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved December 27, 2011.

^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Glueck, Grace (December 27, 2011). "Helen Frankenthaler, Abstract Painter Who Shaped a Movement, Dies at 83". The New York Times. Retrieved December 27, 2011.

Jump up ^ Grace Glueck, NY Times, 1998 Retrieved August 17, 2010

Jump up ^ Tate bio Retrieved August 17, 2010

Jump up ^ Britannica RetrievedAugust 17, 2010

Jump up ^ Fenton, Terry. "Morris Louis". sharecom.ca. Retrieved December 8, 2008

Jump up ^ Michael Klein, Mountains and Sea, ArtNet Retrieved August 17, 2010

Jump up ^ Carmean, E.A. Helen Frankenthaler A Paintings Retrospective, Exhibition Catalog, p.12, Harry N. Abrams in conjunction with The Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, ISBN 0-8109-1179-5

Jump up ^ John Elderfield, After a Breakthrough on the 1950s paintings of Helen Frankenthaler Retrieved August 17, 2010

Jump up ^ ART/ARCHITECTURE; Helen Frankenthaler, Back to the Future; New York Times; April 27, 2003

Jump up ^ list of artists in the exhibition Retrieved August 17, 2010

Jump up ^ 'Color Field' Artists Found a Different Way Retrieved 3 August 2010

Jump up ^ "Colour Field Painting". Tate. Retrieved August 17, 2010

Jump up ^ "Lifetime Honors: National Medal of Arts". National Endowment for the Arts. Retrieved December 27, 2011.

Jump up ^ Kennedy, Mark for The Associated Press (December 27, 2011). "Abstract Painter Helen Frankenthaler Dies At 83". Salon.com. Retrieved December 27, 2011.

Jump up ^ Helen Frankenthaler Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, New York.

Jump up ^ Grace Glueck says in the NYT this quote comes from: Gruen, John (1972). The Party’s Over Now: Reminiscences of the fifties—New York's artists, writers, musicians, and their friends. Viking Press. ISBN 0-916366-54-5.

^ Jump up to: a b Rose, Joel (December 27, 2011). "Abstract Artist Helen Frankenthaler Dies At Age 83". National Public Radio (NPR). Retrieved December 27, 2011.

Jump up ^ Gibson, Eric (December 27, 2011). "Pushing Past Abstraction". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones. Retrieved December 27, 2011.

Jump up ^ Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959, March 8 - April 13, 2013 Gagosian Gallery, New York.

Jump up ^ Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959, March 8 - April 13, 2013 Gagosian Gallery, New York.

Jump up ^ Los Angeles Times, Dec. 28, 2011