Introducing Helen Frankenthaler by Ella Strohmaier

 Artist Helen Frankenthaler was born December 12, 1928, in Manhattan, New York, New York, and died on  December 27, 2011, in Darien, CT. 

Picture of Helen above

Flirt created in 1995 by using Acrylic paint on paper.

Mountains and Sea created in 1952 using oil and charcoal on unprimed and unsized canvas.

Cool Summer created in 1962 using oil paint on canvas.

 Helen Frankenthaler was associated with many art styles. Initially it was abstract expressionism, and her works were also centered compositions, where everything happened in the center of the canvas. She then experimented with more linear shapes, and then her style shifted to symmetrical paintings. Frankenthaler began to use acrylic paints rather than oil paints because they allowed for both opacity and sharpness when put on the canvas. Later she had done away with the soak stain technique entirely, preferring thicker paint that allowed her to employ bright colors almost reminiscent of Fauvism. Throughout the 1970s, Frankenthaler explored the joining of areas of the canvas through the use of modulated hues, and experimented with large, abstract forms. Her work in the 1980s was characterized as much calmer, with its use of muted colors and relaxed brushwork. 

"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." -Helen Frankenthaler