Helen Frankenthaler

Previous owner: André Emmerich Gallery, New York; Albert F. Weis, Savannah; Acquavella Galleries, New York; private collection; Sotheby´s, New York, 1988; private collection
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Christie’s, New York, 2019

In an interview in 1965, Helen Frankenthaler told curator Henry Geldzahler, ‘When a picture needs blank canvas to breathe a certain way, I leave it. This is an aspect of giving up one’s mark.’ [1] In the remarkably reduced One O’Clock created a year later, all the painted elements run along the edges of the canvas. The only activated white space in the middle of the canvas is mirrored by a shape on the left edge.

The emptiness in this painting is exactly what Frankenthaler was describing in the interview. Looking at a studio photograph taken by Alexander Liberman while One O’Clock was being created, we see that there were additional shapes on the right side of the painting initially. Frankenthaler worked on the floor, pouring diluted paint onto unprimed, loose fabric. During this period, she switched from oil to acrylic paints, as they dried more quickly and she was able to achieve luminous colour tones with her so-called Soak-Stain technique. Only in a second step, after the painting process, did she select the final picture detail and mount the painting on to stretcher frames. The addition or removal of colour forms ultimately plays a decisive role in whether tension or a feeling of free space and breath is created in the picture.

[1] Helen Frankenthaler, in: Henry Geldzahler: ‘An Interview with Helen Frankenthaler’, in: Artforum, October 1965, vol. 4, no. 2, p. 38.