"Flirt", Helen Frankenthaler, Lincoln Center RARE Signed & dated Abstract

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Helen Frankenthaler
"Flirt", Helen Frankenthaler, Lincoln Center RARE Signed & dated Abstract
2003

About the Item

Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928–2011) "Flirt", 2003 Lincoln Center Art Program with Brand X Editions Screenprint on Rives BFK paper Edition: 126 26 7/8" x 39 1/4" paper size Framed Archivally with UV Plexiglas : 31" x 42" (Approx) Abstract Art, Contemporary Art Signed, numbered and dated $28,500 Helen Frankenthaler is a widely acclaimed member of the New York School and a leading figure of second-generation abstract expressionists, is a prominent American artist. Her artworks are in numerous Museum and important Fine Art Collections worldwide. Born in New York in 1928, Frankenthaler attended the Dalton School, where she studied with the Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. After attending Bennington College in Vermont, she returned to New York to establish herself among the New York avant-garde. In 1950 she met the formalist art critic Clement Greenberg, who proved instrumental in acquainting Frankenthaler with leading figures in the New York art world such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Like them, she was interested in transforming elements of nature into abstract shapes and color. During the 1950s, Frankenthaler defined her personal style, moving away from abstract expressionism to develop a new technique: pouring thinned pigment onto unprimed canvas. This way of painting, asserting the primacy of color through fusing color and ground, led to a new style in art: color field painting. Frankenthaler’s Mountains and Sea (1952) signified a turning point in the artist’s career as in her large works she began to use this stain technique, pouring turpentine-thinned layers of paint over large unprimed canvases, with effects reminiscent of watercolor. For a number of her contemporaries, primary among them the artists of the Washington color school, soak-staining replaced the thickly painted, gestural strokes of action painting. This pouring technique created abstract fields, or shapes, of color, simplifications of scenes in nature, and achieved a dynamic lyricism that claims the picture space. Frankenthaler’s stained paintings, based on real or imaginary landscapes, epitomize her art. In 1958 Frankenthaler married painter, Robert Motherwell, from whom she was later divorced. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s she continued to explore the use of large abstract forms and rich color in her canvases; but in this later work, Frankenthaler began to “flood” her canvases with color rather than staining them, a result of the artist’s switch from oil to acrylic paint. She also experimented with other materials, producing steel sculptures, ceramic works, woodcuts, color prints, and illustrated books. In addition to teaching at New York, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities, Frankenthaler has had numerous one-person exhibitions, including retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1969 and the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1989.

Creator:
Helen Frankenthaler (1928, American)
Creation Year:
2003
Dimensions:
Height: 31 in (78.74 cm)Width: 42 in (106.68 cm)
Medium:
Screen
Movement & Style:
Abstract
Period:
21st Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Cleveland, OH
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU127224851671

Shop All Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler

Prolific and pioneering painter Helen Frankenthaler said it was “a combination of impatience, laziness and innovation” that drove her to thin her paints with turpentine so that they would seep into the fabric of an unprimed canvas. Her breakthrough in the early 1950s led the way for a spellbinding new style of painting that would come to be known as Color Field.

Although Color Field is often considered a strain of Abstract Expressionism, Frankenthaler’s work differed from the gestural “Action Painting” that typified the paintings of artists like Willem de Kooning and Lee Krasner. Her vast and immersive expanses of color created at a fearless scale captivated art critics and greatly influenced her peers including Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.

Frankenthaler knew from an early age that she wanted to be a painter. The youngest daughter of a New York State Supreme Court justice, she grew up on Manhattan’s Park Avenue and as a child delighted in the little ways color and form revealed themselves, whether dribbling red nail polish in a sink full of water or drawing her steps from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to her family’s apartment. As a student at Bennington College, her rare vision was enriched by the mentorship of painter Paul Feeley, who gave her lessons in Cubism. After dabbling in art history at Columbia University, she rented a studio downtown and befriended rising New York art stars like Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell, whom she later married.

Characterized by “direct, exuberant gestures,” the Abstract Expressionist technique was all about gusto, and Frankenthaler had it in spades. One of the few women of this era to garner widespread critical acclaim, Frankenthaler had a significant impact on the mid-20th-century art world. She exhibited in the high-profile 1951 Ninth Street Show and, in 1957, she appeared in a Life magazine spread on women artists photographed by Gordon Parks. In 1960, the Jewish Museum held her first major museum show, a retrospective of her 1950s work. A 1969 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art further introduced Frankenthaler to the broader art world.

While Frankenthaler remains best known for bold, expressive “soak-stain” paintings such as Mountains and Sea (1952), she worked across diverse media for decades, with forays into woodcutting, drawing and printmaking that also pushed boundaries. She also taught at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, fostering generations of artists. She died in 2011.

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