HELEN FRANKENTHALER Day One, 1987

Helen Frankenthaler was an American painter, whose style was abstract expressionism. Frankenthaler’s work, Mountains and Sea (1952), is one example of her work as part of the New York School, where analyzing natural forms and reproducing them artistically was one focus. This work, though inspired by nature, is distinctly different in terms of its technique. What makes her early work distinctive from others at that time is her development of a personal technique using oils. Rather than using traditional application methods, she thinned oil paint until it was the consistency of watercolors. Then, Helen Frankenthaler painted wide areas of color, allowing the paint to soak into the canvas, rather than sitting on top of the material. This approach was partially inspired by Jackson Pollock’s method of dripping paint onto canvas. She also worked with acrylics and other media later in her life during various different artistic phases. Helen Frankenthaler completed a body of work which found its inspiration from three major art movements: Abstract Expressionism, Lyrical Abstraction, and Color Field painting. In addition to these noted movements, she was inspired by the paintings of Jackson Pollock, studied with Hans Hoffman who fueled the Abstract Expressionist movement, and was guided by Clement Greenberg, who included her work in his curated exhibit Post-Painterly Abstraction, in 1962. Other works which Frankenthaler completed through her lifetime were abstract paintings which depict specific places she visited. Others depict the landscapes of her interior imagination. She also worked with printmaking, beginning her experimentations in 1961. Her famous print, Madame Butterfly required the use of 46 woodblocks and 102 colors to create. This work is representative of her goal of creating art that looks as if it simply happened in the moment, “all at once”, though it may have taken countless hours and technical processes to create it. Less

Helen Frankenthaler was an American painter, whose style was abstract expressionism. Frankenthaler’s work, Mountains and Sea (1952), is one example of her work as part of the New York School, where analyzing natural forms and reproducing them artis More