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Indepth Arts News:
"Works by Helen Frankenthaler"
2004-02-25 until 2004-03-21
Leslie Sacks Fine Art
Los Angeles, CA,
USA United States of America
Helen Frankenthaler was born in New York in 1928, where she has spent most of her life. She studied at a number of art schools and by 1950 she had met many of the main figures of Abstract Expressionism. In 1958 she married the painter Robert Motherwell. Frankenthaler became the first American painter after Jackson Pollock to see the implications of the color staining of raw canvas, in which she pours paint directly onto the unprimed surface of a canvas, allowing the color to soak into its support, rather than painting on top of an already sealed canvas as was customary.
According to the critic, Clement Greenberg, “Mountains and Sea" (1952), Frankenthaler's first “stained painting,” was the 'first monument of Post-Painterly Abstraction,’ and it is certainly one of the most important works in the 'Colour-Field' style.” This highly intuitive process, "stain painting," became the hallmark of her style and enabled her to create color-filled canvases that seemed to float on air. She took from Pollock the notion of fusing drawing and painting, translating this idea into her own suggestive, mysterious calligraphy.
In 1960 Frankenthaler made her first prints. Since then, she has worked with a variety of printmaking techniques in addition to painting. Although her works are abstract, a strong suggestion of landscape is often apparent, and they have been praised for their lyrical qualities.
IMAGE
Helen Frankenthaler
Vacation 4, 1975
Acrylic on canvas board
24 x 18 inches
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