Helen Frankenthaler
Poured thinned paint into raw canvas in 1952 and changed what the next generation did with a brush.
Helen Frankenthaler was born in New York in 1928 and in 1952, at twenty-three, painted Mountains and Sea by pouring thinned oil directly onto unprimed cotton duck laid on the floor, so the colour soaked into the weave rather than sitting on it. Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland saw it the following year and described it as a bridge between Pollock and what was possible; the soak-stain method effectively began Colour Field painting. She worked for six decades, moved to acrylic in the 1960s, and made exceptional woodcuts in her later years. She died in 2011.
The 1950s and 1960s stained canvases lead the market. Because the paint is in the canvas rather than on it, these works cannot be surface-cleaned in the usual way, and staining, discolouration of the raw ground and old restoration are effectively permanent — condition is unusually determinative. Frankenthaler's prints are a major body of work in themselves, particularly the woodcuts made with Kenneth Tyler, which involved dozens of blocks and are technically remarkable. The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation holds the archive and the catalogue raisonne project.
If you own a work by Helen Frankenthaler
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