I have been lucky enough in my travels to find an art museum to wander around and continue to be fascinated by the colors and movements swirling around in an artist's head. I appreciate the depth and time it takes to create some of the master works in all of their glory and reality, but abstract art has always gripped me the most. It is often the least understood and the hardest to explain. Most people like what is familiar and gravitate towards pieces that have a recognizable imagery. The wonderful thing about abstract art is each person gets to create their own interpreted story. They can see what they want to see before understanding what the artist intended.
Helen Frankenthaler was born in New York City in 1928. She was a notable American Abstract painter and helped to develop color field painting. She exhibited work around the world starting in the 1950's until her death in 2011. She continued to produce viable work her entire career.
Her main influences were Hans Hoffman, Jackson Pollock, and Clement Greenberg. Frankenthaler's work is often identified "with the use of fluid shapes, abstract masses and lyrical gestures". She has said "A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once."
The follow works of Helen Frankethaler are from the time span of 1952-1988. Her growth and color composition are most notable.
"It is an order familiar and new at the same time."--Helen Frankenthaler
1952 Mountains and Sea
This noted a big breakthrough in the style of painting with oils that looked like pastels and was then known as "stain painting". Her work through the 1950's were similar in form containing evenly weighted compositions and stain painting.
1959 Mother Goose Melody
In this work the color palette is much darker and she invites the idea of a heavily, densely weighted side and an airy constructed side in the painting together.
1960-1962 Seascape with Dunes
This is a very centralized piece with a lot of raw canvas showing the stains of oil paints like ghost shadows.
1963-1968 Mauve District and Flood
These pieces were a large move towards acrylic paint which lent her to have a deeper sense of color within her chosen palette. This move to acrylics saw less raw canvas and the paintings begin to feel more full and more abstract.
1970-1971 Sesame and Chairman of the Board
Frankenthaler continues the use of acrylics, but starts looking at her work with new formal consideration.
"Frankenthaler 'points to the four different compositional placements of the painting:its overall flatness, the play of the left side versus the right side, the interior of the white crossing passage--what she refers to as a cable or crevice'--and drawn lines, about whose space making she observes, 'I was very conscious of threading line through the cable/crevice'"
1972-1975 Hint from Bassano and Nature Abhors a Vacuum
Her work in this time is filled with wide swathes of color with the combination of levels both symmetrical and asymmetrical in context along with horizontal line movement.
1976-1977 Natural Answer and M.
After a trip to the Southwest, Frankenthaler came home with a new color palette which were mostly terra cotta shades. In this time period, the paintings were actually painted instead of stained. With this there is a definite sense of structure and horizontal brush movement.
1978-1981 for E.M.
Paintings are becoming more rigid with themes and lines have a more interlocking look. White starts to be a significant accent through them.
1981-1985 Reflections on a Blue Pool
Frankenthaler moves into a new period where the paint appears stained again with the addition of raised paint which adds texture and depth to the work.
1986-1988 Morpheus
She begins to move into implied grid like structures lending the work to have a more vertical movement and feeling.
I hope you enjoy these few selections from Helen Frankenthaler's collection. Feel free to look her up as there is a vast amount of her work on the internet.
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