29 Facts About Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter.

Helen Frankenthaler was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting.

Helen Frankenthaler 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.

Helen 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 been exhibited worldwide since the 1950s.

Helen Frankenthaler was born on December 12,1928, in New York City.

Helen Frankenthaler's father was Alfred Frankenthaler, a New York State Supreme Court judge.

Helen Frankenthaler met Clement Greenberg in 1950 and had a five-year relationship with him.

Helen Frankenthaler later married Robert Motherwell, another painter, in 1958; the couple divorced in 1971.

Helen Frankenthaler gained two stepdaughters from him, Jeannie Motherwell and Lise Motherwell.

Helen Frankenthaler served on the Cambridge Arts Council Public Art Commission from 2004 - 2007 and is a member of the advisory board of Provincetown Arts magazine.

Helen Frankenthaler is currently represented by M Fine Arts Galerie in Boston, MA and The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA.

Active as a painter for nearly six decades, Helen Frankenthaler passed through many phases and stylistic shifts.

Helen Frankenthaler made use of large formats on which she painted, generally, simplified abstract compositions.

In 1957, Helen Frankenthaler began to experiment with linear shapes and more organic, sun-like, rounded forms in her works.

Helen Frankenthaler began to make use of single stains and blots of solid color against white backgrounds, often in the form of geometric shapes.

Helen Frankenthaler often worked by laying her canvas out on the floor, a technique inspired by Jackson Pollock.

The first Jackson Pollock show Helen Frankenthaler saw was at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1950.

Helen Frankenthaler had this to say about seeing Pollock's paintings Autumn Rhythm, Number 30,1950, Number One,1950 :.

In Mountains and Sea, her first professionally exhibited work, Helen Frankenthaler made use of the soak stain technique.

Helen Frankenthaler recognized a need to continually challenge herself to develop as an artist.

Helen Frankenthaler collaborated with Tatyana Grosman in 1961 to create her first prints.

In 1976, Helen Frankenthaler began to work within the medium of woodcuts.

Essence of Mulberry was inspired by two sources: the first was an exhibition of fifteenth century woodcuts that Helen Frankenthaler saw on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the second being a mulberry tree that grew outside of Tyler's studio.

Helen Frankenthaler then went on to create Madame Butterfly, a print that employed one hundred and two different colors and forty-six woodblocks.

Helen Frankenthaler served on the National Council on the Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1985 to 1992.

The New York-based Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, established and endowed by the artist during her lifetime, is dedicated to promoting greater public interest in and understanding of the visual arts.

On October 6,2019, Helen Frankenthaler was included in Sparkling Amazons: Abstract Expressionist Women of the 9th St Show at the Katonah Museum of Art in Westchester County, NY.

Helen Frankenthaler was a presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts, which advises the NEA's chairman.

Helen Frankenthaler died on December 27,2011, at the age of 83 in Darien, Connecticut, following a long and undisclosed illness.