Helen Frankenthaler’s Moonrise was created in the early 1980s, a period during which the artist was deeply engaged with a number of exhibition projects. In 1980, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, dedicated a major show to her printmaking (Helen Frankenthaler Prints: 1961–1979), accompanied by a catalogue raisonné. Shortly afterwards, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Massachusetts presented Frankenthaler: 1950s, the first focused survey of her early work since the major retrospective of 1960. Finally, the Museum of Art in Michigan organised the touring exhibition Helen Frankenthaler: Works of the Seventies, which brought together paintings, works on paper, prints, and sculptural pieces in steel, clay, and ceramic tile.
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011)
Moonrise, 1981
Currently exhibited: No
Material: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 134,6 x 229,6 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_341
Image rights: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Copyright: Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York
Acquired: Reinhard Ernst Collection, 2015
Helen Frankenthaler moves Jenny Brosinski, Ina Gerken, Adrian Schiess, 26.10.2025–22.02.2026
This intensive curatorial focus led Frankenthaler to revisit the concerns of her 1970s painting – a connection that is clearly felt in Moonrise. The work relates closely to the landscape-inspired formats of that period. On a horizontally oriented support, a pulsating, dark red ground unfolds, bounded in the upper quarter by a distinct horizon line. The lower section is composed of saturated, interflowing zones of deep red, while in the upper area Frankenthaler applies painterly passages of thick, atmospheric colour in violet, pink, and grey tones. From the horizontal divide, a moon appears to rise — a motif that recalls Impressionist depictions of moonrises.
In Moonrise, Frankenthaler unites the gestural freedom of her painting with a heightened sense of mood and atmosphere, placing the emotional and environmental resonance of the image at the centre of the viewer’s experience.
