Helen Frankenthaler’s works of the 1980s are characterised by great formal diversity due to the wide range of techniques and approaches she explored. She lays the fabric flat and soaks it with paint, allowing splashes and strokes to dissolve and spread then adds impasto forms. As a second step in the process, she selects part of the picture to focus upon. While she is painting, all rules are suspended in favour of improvisation and free artistic action.
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011)
Pyramid, 1988
Currently exhibited: Yes (Gallery: Painting as a Home)
Material: Acrylic paint on canvas
Size: 169 x 166.5 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_375
Image rights: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Copyright: Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York
Keywords:
Previous owner: John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Christie’s, London, 2016
Helen Frankenthaler’s works of the 1980s are characterised by great formal diversity due to the wide range of techniques and approaches she explored. She lays the fabric flat and soaks it with paint, allowing splashes and strokes to dissolve and spread then adds impasto forms. As a second step in the process, she selects part of the picture to focus upon. While she is painting, all rules are suspended in favour of improvisation and free artistic action: ‘The only rule is there are no rules. Anything goes – whether that’s metallic paint, or something ugly or simply dumping a huge amount of paint on to thin paper. It’s about risk, consciously taking risks. The painting unfolds, takes over, unravels as I continue. I watch everything as it develops and pick up on it. More and more I feel it manifesting, what it must look like.’ [1]
[1] Helen Frankenthaler, in: Karen Wilkin: Frankenthaler. Works on paper, 1949–1984, exh. cat. Solomon R. Guggenheim et al., New York 1984, p. 101.
