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.
Find original Helen Frankenthaler art on 1stDibs.
Acrobat (detail), Limited Edition Porcelain Plate in bespoke gift box - Abstract
By Helen Frankenthaler
Located in New York, NY
This porcelain/ceramic plate makes a gorgeous gift - in a bright blue bespoke box, ready to be gifted. Any fan of Helen Frankenthaler or Abstract Expressionist art would be thrilled!...
Porcelain, Screen, Cardboard, Mixed Media
Helen Frankenthaler - Milwaukee Art Museum invitation card, Hand Signed, Framed
By Helen Frankenthaler
Located in New York, NY
Offset lithograph invitation card - 2 sided Hand signed by Helen Frankenthaler in ink on the verso A collectors' item when hand signed by the artist Published by the Milwaukee Art Mu...
Lithograph, Offset
Solar Imp
By Helen Frankenthaler
Located in New York, NY
Screenprint in colors on wove paper. Signed by the artist in pencil and also numbered 96/126 in pencil. Published by Lincoln Center List Poster and Print Program, New York. Second ...
Screen, Color
Acrobat
By Helen Frankenthaler
Located in Toronto, Ontario
Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) is one of the most revered abstract painters of the 20th century as well as being one of the most successful and collected female artists. Her current...
Ceramic
$20,000
H 5.75 in W 8.5 in D 8.5 in
TRIBAL BIRD DRAWING ON JAR (INV# NP5076) by Magdalena and Michael Frimkess
By Magdalena and Michael Frimkess
Located in Morton Grove, IL
RARE TRIBAL BIRD DRAWING ON JAR (INV# NP5076) MAGDALENA SUAREZ FRIMKESS & MICHAEL FRIMKESS stoneware and glaze 5.75 x 8.5 x 8.5” 1997 signed by artist pro...
Ceramic, Stoneware, Glaze, ABS
$4,250
H 17 in W 28 in D 3 in
Contemporary Porcelain Wall Sculpture Installation “Bloom”
By Element Clay Studio
Located in Savannah, GA
“Bloom” is a contemporary porcelain wall sculpture installation by Heather Knight, founder of Element Clay Studio, a Savannah-based studio recognized for organic modern ceramic works...
Ceramic, Porcelain
Nick Thomm - GHOSTS (BLUE)
By Nick Thomm
Located in FITZROY, VIC
Nick Thomm 'GHOSTS' (Blue) 69cm x 92cm (27"×36″) Limited Edition of 199 Hand Signed and Numbered #113 Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle 308gsm Fine Art Paper. Condition: NEW. Wo...
Archival Ink, Giclée, Archival Pigment
$900
H 24.07 in W 36 in
Lee Krasner: A Retrospective - The Museum of Modern Art (Celebration) Poster
By Lee Krasner
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
Artist: (after) Lee Krasner (American, 1908-1984) Title: "Lee Krasner: A Retrospective - The Museum of Modern Art (Celebration)" *Signed and dated in the plate (printed signature) lo...
Lithograph, Offset
ARCHANGEL (XL Size)
By Nick Thomm
Located in FITZROY, VIC
Nick Thomm ARCHANGEL (XL SIZE 36" x 48"). Limited Edition #22 of 25. Hand Signed & Numbered. Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle 308gsm Fine Art Paper. Condition: NEW - Unopene...
Archival Ink, Giclée, Archival Pigment
$294
H 20.48 in W 14.57 in D 0.04 in
Untitled - Offset and Lithograph after Willem De Kooning - 1985
By Willem de Kooning
Located in Roma, IT
Untitled is an offset and lithograph print realized on Fabriano Paper after a drawing by Willem De Kooning of 1980. The print suite was realized in 1985 in a limited edition of 2500...
Lithograph, Offset
Solitude
By Louise Nevelson
Located in Toronto, Ontario
Caviar20 is excited to be offering this evocative print by the inimitable Louise Nevelson ( 1899-1988) - one of the most revered and unique sculptors of the 20th century. Nevelson i...
Found Objects, Cardboard, Screen
Sand & Sea
By Michael David
Located in Phoenix, AZ
encaustic on panel b. 1954, Reno Nevada Michael David is best known for his use of encaustic on large abstract paintings. A practitioner of Abstract Expressionism, David layers bees...
Wood, Wax, Encaustic, Oil
$306
H 14.57 in W 20.48 in D 0.04 in
Untitled - Offset and Lithograph after Willem De Kooning - 1985
By Willem de Kooning
Located in Roma, IT
Untitled is an offset and lithograph print realized on Fabriano Paper after a drawing by Willem De Kooning of 1958. Signed o the plate on the lower. The print suite was realized i...
Lithograph, Offset
Free Space - Blue
By Lee Krasner
Located in Toronto, Ontario
The essence of Lee Krasner's (1908-1984) biography is familiar to anyone who has studied women's role in 20th century art history: An accomplished artist whose own output gets eclips...
Screen
$650
H 20 in W 24 in D 0.1 in
Cat and Mouse, Abstract Woodblock Print by Charlie Hewitt
By Charlie Hewitt
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Charlie Hewitt, American (1946 - ) Title: Untitled - D Year: circa 1980 Medium: Woodblock, Signed and Numbered in Pencil Edition: 100 Size: 20 in. x 24 in. (50.8 cm x 60.96 cm)
Screen
$700
H 12.5 in W 16.6 in
Abstract Picture (Limited edition print; authorized promotional reproduction)
By Gerhard Richter
Located in New York, NY
Gerhard Richter Untitled Abstract Picture, 2002 Offset lithograph on GardaMatt Art 250 GSM paper Not signed, edition of 3433 12 1/2 × 16 3.5 inches Unframed Printed on GardaMatt Art 250 GSM paper, this beautiful and colorful piece was part of a portfolio of loose plate reproductions for Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes works. Released during his exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Art (Abstract Pictures) and the Museum of Modern Art (Gerhard Richter, 40 Years of Painting). It depicts Richters 1999 Oil on Aluminum abstract picture) More about Gerhard Richter: Gerhard Richter was born in 1932 in Dresden, Germany. Throughout his career, Richter has negotiated the frontier between photography and painting, captivated by the way in which these two seemingly opposing practices speak to and challenge one another. From exuberant canvases rendered with a squeegee and acerbic color charts to paintings of photographic detail and close-ups of a single brushstroke, Richter moves effortlessly between the two mediums, reveling in the complexity of their relationship, while never asserting one above the other. Richter’s life traces the defining moments of twentieth-century history and his work reverberates with the trauma of National Socialism and the Holocaust. In the wake of the Second World War, Richter trained in a Socialist Realist style sanctioned by East Germany’s Communist government. When he defected to West Germany in 1961, a month before the Berlin Wall was erected, Richter left his entire artistic oeuvre up to that point behind. From 1961 to 1964—alongside Blinky Palermo and Sigmar Polke—Richter studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he began to explore the material, conceptual, and historical implications of painting without ideological restraint. Richter’s earliest paintings in Düsseldorf, stimulated by a fascination with current affairs and popular culture, responded to images from magazines and newspaper cuttings. Through the 1960s, Richter continued to address found and media images of subjects such as military jets, portraits, and aerial photographs. Notably, he reimagined family pictures he had smuggled from East Germany that included his smiling uncle Rudi, dressed in a Nazi uniform...
Lithograph, Offset