Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) was an  American painter.

Biography
Frankenthaler was born in New York City on December 12, 1928. She began studying art when she was 15 years old. She went to the Dalton School in New York City. She then went to Bennington College.

Frankenthaler moved back to New York City in 1948. Frankenthaler met important New York Abstract painters including Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline. In the early 1950s Frankenthaler developed a style of painting she called "soak-stain" She made paintings by putting canvas on the floor and applying thin paint to the canvas. This would create a "stain" of color. The stained canvases were very large. 

Frankenthaler's style influenced other painters like Morris Lewis and Kenneth Nolan. Their painting style was called Color Field painting. Frankenthaler is also known for her printmaking, including lithographs, etchings and screen prints.

In 1958 Frankenthaler married the painter Robert Motherwell. They divorced in 1971.

In 1960 Frankenthaler had a very big solo show at the Jewish Museum in New York City. In 1969 Frankenthaler had another big show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1989 the Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective exhibition titled Helen Frankenthaler: A Paintings Retrospective.

Frankenthaler died in Darien, Connecticut on December 27, 2011.

Work
Frankenthaler's paintings and prints are in many museums and collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,

References

Category:1928 births
Category:2011 deaths
Category:People from New York City
Category:American artists