Helen Frankenthaler: Eden, 1956. Oil on canvas, 103 by 117 inches. Courtesy Gagosian, New York. © Estate of Helen Frankenthaler/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Helen Frankenthaler was a true pioneer, who developed a technique in the early 1950s whereby she created enormous abstract compositions using colorful pours and stains on unprimed canvas. Radically transforming the visual language of Abstract Expressionism, her work was much imitated by the Color Field painters of the 1960s and ’70s. Throughout her long career, up until the time of her death in 2011, Frankenthaler, though respected, was somewhat taken for granted by the art world. This arresting exhibition, the first posthumous Frankenthaler survey in New York, traces the evolution of her work from 1950-59, and resituates it in the prominent art-historical position it deserves.