Helen Frankenthaler in her studio on East 83rd Street while she is at work on April Mood and Under April Mood (both 1974), New York, 1974. Photograph by Alexander Liberman; © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2000.R.19). Artwork © 2024 Helen Frankenthaler. Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
As the sun set on a warm autumn evening and the moon cast its glow on the rustic stones of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, I found myself amidst the elegant “Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules” exhibition, available from September 27, 2024, to January 26, 2025. Observing a group of exhibition invigilators deeply engaged in animated conversation, with gestures flying and laughter erupting, I was struck by the scene. Their shared mirth seemed to echo the essence of the exhibition itself, celebrating the themes of friendship and unity.
The exhibition, though not an exhaustive retrospective, showcases selected paintings and sculptures by Frankenthaler alongside pieces by her contemporaries. This artistic roll call features Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Anthony Caro, David Smith, Anne Truitt, and Robert Motherwell, Frankenthaler’s husband from 1958 to 1971. Curator Douglas Dreishpoon, who leads the Catalogue Raisonné project at the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in New York, crafted this narrative through the prism of friendship. He suggests it offers “another way to see and contextualize Frankenthaler’s innovations,” highlighting that the artist carefully selected her close associates, who in turn were supported and celebrated.
Although a solo exhibition of Frankenthaler’s work would have been equally fascinating, the current retrospective in Italy is the most comprehensive to date. The sparse wall labels allow visitors to fully engage with Frankenthaler’s art, encouraging personal interpretations of the connections between the artist and her peers. This curatorial approach prioritizes the artwork itself over its explanation, emphasizing aesthetics rather than narrative—and it’s effective: one can become completely enveloped in the vastness of color and shape.
The Influence of Color and Pollock
Celebrated for her techniques of lightly soaking and staining canvases with solvent-diluted pigments, pouring out buckets of paint and moving it around with sponges or the edge of her hand, Frankenthaler believed that “scale and the play of space and light are largely what it’s all about.” Spilling, staining, tinting, and using color as line, the artist seemingly spread the edges of her painting, stretching the limits of the border while staying in and on the picture plane.
The exhibition unfolds in a loosely chronological manner, commencing with Helen Frankenthaler’s expansive piece, Moveable Blue (1973). In this work, the pigments seem to pulsate with life, spreading and swirling unrestrainedly. A vast expanse of aquamarine stretches over the canvas, merging into hues of mustard yellow and ochre, creating streams of a greenish tint. In contrast, Fiesta (1973), an acrylic-on-paper drawing, though smaller in scale, is equally evocative. Frankenthaler employs a dilute brick-red paint, encircling the parchment in a single, fluid motion. The pigment fades, evolving into a nebulous form that envelops patches of pink and green, culminating in a striking streak of yellow.
The exhibition, which aligns closely with the work of Frankenthaler’s male peers, notably omits several of her female contemporaries, such as her close associate, painter Grace Hartigan. Despite this oversight, the influence of Jackson Pollock on Frankenthaler is palpable; she was deeply affected by his radical black-and-white paintings viewed at Betty Parsons Gallery. Pollock’s instinct for expansive drawing inspired Frankenthaler to adopt a boundless approach. In Pollock’s Number 14 (1951), rhythmic lines and drips of black enamel unfold across the canvas, evoking symbols and hieroglyphics through abstract realism and dynamic motion. Adjacent to this, Frankenthaler’s Open Wall (1953) displays layers of blue, pink, and yellow, disrupted by deliberate crimson marks, embodying a visceral exploration of space and form.
Friendships and Influences
The collaboration with Pollock establishes the ambiance for an exhibition that presents a succession of galleries filled with remarkable correlations: from the stratified nebulae of hues in Frankenthaler’s Tutti-Frutti (1966), positioned behind David Smith’s Untitled (Zig VI) with its stacked, hand-painted yellow steel girders of different widths that appear to challenge gravity, to Anne Truitt’s Seed (1969), a monolithic sculpture of creamy acrylic on wood that seems to levitate, toying with the concepts of solidity versus malleability, and perhaps, a touch of enchantment.
Frankenthaler’s influence reached artists like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, who are also showcased in the exhibition. They started to explore the soak-stain technique after art critic Clement Greenberg, who had a five-year relationship with Frankenthaler, introduced them to her studio in 1953 during her absence. Louis consistently expressed his gratitude and admiration for Frankenthaler. His work, Aleph Series V (1960) from the ‘Florals’ series, features diluted acrylic resin paint cascading in petal-like shapes from the canvas’s center to its edges. Louis was celebrated for freeing color from the confines of outlined shapes. In this piece, the vivid hues of red, blue, yellow, green, and orange blend on the canvas, creating a brownish expanse that overlays the luminous streaks of color, forming an alluring, muddied veil that invites a closer look.
In the early 1960s, Rothko’s influence on Frankenthaler was akin to Pollock’s in the 1950s; his treatment of shapes as dynamic portals of suspended light shaped her dramatic sensibility. A highlight of the exhibition is one of his Untitled paintings from 1949, where misty layers of red, yellow, green, and brown seem to levitate over each other, creating their own cosmos. This impact is echoed in Frankenthaler’s vibrant canvases of the 1980s, such as Easter Light (1982), with its fluid washes of purple merging into nebulous columns of black, punctuated by bold streaks of stark white.
Helen Frankenthaler Ocean Drive West #1 (1974). New York, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. © 2024 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Discoveries of Form
“Painting Without Rules” might have gained from a single room showcasing the steel sculptures Helen Frankenthaler created in Anthony Caro’s London studio in 1972. Presenting “Matisse Table,” “Yard,” and “Heart of London Map” together would have highlighted Frankenthaler’s adept use of line and form in three dimensions, as well as the compelling interaction of mass, volume, and weight among the pieces.
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