Discussing this painting, Frankenthaler described its intended meaning, its protracted making, and its innovative materiality. It is part of a series “involved in inner amorphous worlds or depths exploding on the surface and in perspective.” To achieve that, she “used tube paint, turpentine, enamel. Started the picture, worked on it for weeks on and off, wasn’t pleased, put it aside. Picked it up again months later, ‘saved’ portions of it. Black was the final gesture.”
2025
Gallery label from Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction, April 19 - August 13, 2017
Frankenthaler described this painting as part of a series "involved in inner amorphous worlds or depths exploding on the surface and in perspective, and held at points by local blocks of paint." To create this illusion of depth, Frankenthaler thinned her pigments with turpentine so that they would soak directly into the canvas and stain it. She rarely used the color black, but here her technique of stain-painting enables it, in the artist's words, to "act as a color shape, not as black line or 'stable binder.'"
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Helen Frankenthaler
American, 1928–2011 67 works onlineThe artist Helen Frankenthaler has offered two childhood scenes as foundational stories for the path her innovative practice would take.
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