Helen Frankenthaler

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Lore & Background

Helen Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928, in New York City. Her father was Alfred Frankenthaler, a New York State Supreme Court judge. Her mother, Martha (Lowenstein), had emigrated with her family from Germany to the United States as an infant. Helen's 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 Jewish intellectual family that encouraged all three daughters to prepare themselves for professional careers. Her nephew is the artist/photographer Clifford Ross. Frankenthaler studied at the Dalton School under muralist Rufino Tamayo and also at Bennington College in Vermont. While at Bennington, Frankenthaler studied under the direction of Paul Feeley, who is credited with helping her understand pictorial composition, as well as influencing her early cubist-derived style. While at Bennington, before her graduation in 1949, she studied privately with Australian-born painter Wallace Harrison, during the Non-resident term and with Hans Hofmann in 1950. She met Clement Greenberg in 1950 and had a five-year relationship with him. She married the painter Robert Motherwell in 1958; the couple divorced in 1971. Both born of wealthy parents, they were known as 'the golden couple' and for their lavish entertaining. She gained two stepdaughters from him, Jeannie Motherwell and Lise Motherwell. In 1994, Frankenthaler married Stephen M. DuBrul, Jr., an investment banker who served the Gerald Ford administration. Frankenthaler began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. Her official artistic career as a painter was launched in 1952 with the exhibition of Mountains and Sea. She often painted onto unprimed canvas with oil paints that she heavily diluted with turpentine, a technique that she named 'soak stain.' This allowed for the colors to soak directly into the canvas, creating a liquefied, translucent effect that strongly resembled watercolor. She soon changed to using acrylic paints that gave greater movement on the canvas, but not the halo effects from separating oil. Frankenthaler often worked by laying her canvas out on the floor, a technique inspired by Jackson Pollock. Frankenthaler's style passed through many phases and stylistic shifts. In the 1960s, her style shifted towards the exploration of symmetrical paintings, as she began to place strips of colors near the edges of her paintings. In 1960, the term color field painting was used to describe the work of Frankenthaler. By the 1970s, she had done away with the soak stain technique entirely, preferring thicker paint that allowed her to employ bright colors almost reminiscent of Fauvism. Her work in the 1980s was characterized as much calmer, with its use of muted colors and relaxed brushwork. She had a home and studio in Darien, Connecticut.

Reader's Guide

Helen Frankenthaler's significance lies in her role as a bridge between abstract expressionism and color field painting. Her soak stain technique, which involved painting heavily diluted oil paints onto unprimed canvas, created a liquefied, translucent effect that strongly resembled watercolor. Soak stain was also said to be the ultimate fusing of image and canvas, drawing attention to the flatness of the painting itself. The technique was adopted by other artists, notably Morris Louis (1912–1962) and Kenneth Noland (1924–2010), and launched the second generation of the color field school of painting. Her inclusion in Clement Greenberg's 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition helped define a newer generation of abstract painting known as color field. Frankenthaler's work has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions, including a 1989 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and has been exhibited worldwide since the 1950s. In 2001, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Her emphasis on spontaneity is captured in her own words: 'A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once.' She also said, 'I wanted to live in this land. I had to live there, and master the language' after seeing Jackson Pollock's paintings Autumn Rhythm, Number 30, 1950 and Number One, 1950 (Lavender Mist) in 1950. Her works on paper, spanning drawings, watercolors, gouaches, and prints, reveal her innovative approach to color, form, and medium. John Elderfield wrote that the watercolors of Paul Cézanne and John Marin were important early influences, noting that both had liberated their oil paintings by treating them like watercolors, which was what Frankenthaler began to do.

Did You Know?

• Frankenthaler named her technique of painting heavily diluted oil paints onto unprimed canvas 'soak stain,' which created a liquefied, translucent effect resembling watercolor.
• She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg, which introduced a newer generation of abstract painting known as color field.
• Frankenthaler often worked by laying her canvas out on the floor, a technique inspired by Jackson Pollock.
• She married painter Robert Motherwell in 1958; they were known as 'the golden couple' and divorced in 1971.
• In 2001, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.