Helen Frankenthaler

Previous owner: Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York;
Previous owner: Gagosian Gallery, Paris;
Previous owner: The Gerald Fineberg Collection
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, 2023

Characteristic of Frankenthaler’s painting during this period is the use of the three primary colors – blue, red, and yellow – in combination with earthy browns and blacks. At the same time, she began to move away from her signature soak-stain technique, allowing areas of paint to remain on a white-primed canvas. This heightened the brilliance of the colors, introduced passages of overpainting, and produced a more animated surface. This approach gives Untitled its distinctive force and sets it apart from the softer, absorbed hues of her earlier paintings.

According to Elderfield, Frankenthaler’s ‘rough and rowdy paintings’[1] of 1959-1960 formed the starting point for her quieter works of 1961–62. The spontaneous brushwork is deliberately conceived and remained central to Frankenthaler’s art throughout her life:

‘It is crucial to know when to stop. […] Very often the artist spells out for the viewer something that should instead, consciously or unconsciously, emerge through the whole. A painting, however elaborated, should retain a kind of immediacy, freshness, and concision that allow the viewer to complete the rest. If it is all spelled out, one often ends up with a very considered picture that betrays too much concern with its audience.’[2]

[1] John Elderfield, Think Though, Paint Though, Move On: Helen Frankenthaler. After Abstract Expressionism, 1959–1962, pp. 5–23, here p. 6.

[2] Quoted in ‘A Conversation: Helen Frankenthaler with Julia Brown’, in After Mountains and Sea: Frankenthaler 1956–1959, exh. cat. Guggenheim New York/Bilbao/Berlin, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, pp. 29–49, here p. 38.

John Elderfield, Think Though, Paint Though, Move On: Helen Frankenthaler. After Abstract Expressionism, 1959–1962, pp. 5–23, here p. 6.

‘A Conversation: Helen Frankenthaler with Julia Brown’, in After Mountains and Sea: Frankenthaler 1956–1959, exh. cat. Guggenheim New York/Bilbao/Berlin, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, pp. 29–49, here p. 38.