Mini Post: Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928, and raised in New York City. She was the daughter of New York State Supreme Court Justice Alfred Frankenthaler and his wife Marth Frankenthaler. She received her earliest art instruction from Rufino Tamayo at Dalton School. She later graduated from Bennington College in 1949, where she was a student of Paul Feeley.

Helen Frankenthaler is known to be one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. Frankenthaler invented a technique named soak stain in which she heavily diluted an unprimed canvas with turpentine. She laid the canvas on the floor of her studio and poured the thinned paint directly onto the unprimed canvas. Through this invention, she was able to expand the possibilities of abstract painting. Her work has made a huge impact on contemporary art to this day. Her career as an artist took off when Adolph Gottlieb selected her painting Beach (1950) for inclusion in the exhibition titled Fifteen Unknowns: Selected by Artists of the Koots Gallery. Her soak stain technique had made a breakthrough with her Mountains and Sea painting in 1952. This painting quickly became influential for artists who formed the Color Field school of painting. Recent major exhibitions have included many of Helen Frankenthaler's paintings. Frankenthaler has also been the subject of numerous scholarly articles on her work. Articles that were written by renowned art historians, curators, and critics. In 2001, she received the National Medal of Arts. The 3 paintings shown below are 3 of many paintings; Mountains and Sea (1952), Jacob's Ladder (1957), and Nature Abhors a Vacuum (1973).


Mountains and Sea, 1952


Jacob's Ladder, 1957


Nature Abhors a Vacuum,1973

Link: http://www.frankenthalerfoundation.org/helen/biography