HELEN FRANKENTHALER’S paintings are blends of nuanced color that pool and slide, submerging the viewer into liquid shapes. Hers are not representational paintings; they are moods and ideas. She said, “What concerns me when I work is not whether the picture is a landscape or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is: Did I make a beautiful picture?”
Arriving in New York at 19 in the late 1940s, Frankenthaler (1928–2011) was quickly absorbed into the Abstract Expressionists world when it was at peak intensity. Many of the artists at that time lived downtown in cold water flats, worked odd jobs to pay the rent, and scrounged for art supplies. A
