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Helen Frankenthaler
1928–2011

Introduction

Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s until 2011), she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. Frankenthaler began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She 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. Born in Manhattan, she was influenced by Greenberg, Hans Hofmann, and Jackson Pollock's paintings. Her 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. In 2001, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Frankenthaler had a home and studio in Darien, Connecticut.

Wikidata identifier

Q235281

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Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Accessed February 28, 2024.

Introduction

Second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter developed the technique of staining raw canvas with pigment. She is credited as the progenitor of Color-field painting.

Country of birth

United States

Roles

Artist, graphic artist, lithographer, painter, sculptor, teacher, woodcutter

ULAN identifier

500115813

Names

Helen Frankenthaler, H. Frankenthaler, Mrs. Robert Burns Motherwell

View the full Getty record

Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed February 28, 2024.



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