Helen Frankenthaler was born in New York 12 Dec. 1928.For six decades she was a leading exponent of American Abstract Expressionist painting and she is often regarded as a bridge between the first and second generations of the movement.

For her paintings she used a ‘soak-stain’ technique on unprimed canvas, leaving parts of the canvas unpainted to help structure the composition. As Frankenthaler noted: ‘[The] “negative” space has just as active a role as the “positive” painted space. The negative spaces maintain shapes of their own and are not empty.’

More images on the Tate website: https://www.tate.org.uk/search?type=all&q=Helen+Frankenthaler

She was an important figure in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Colour Field Painting. In her early work she was influenced by Jackson Pollock and she developed his drip technique by pouring and running very thin paint—like washes of watercolour—onto canvases laid on the floor. She first used this method in Mountains and Sea (1952, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s collection, on loan to NG, Washington), which is regarded as one of the seminal works of post-war American painting. It particularly impressed Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland when they saw it in her studio in 1953. In 1962 Frankenthaler switched from oil to acrylic paint, which allowed her to achieve more richly saturated colour.

Text source: The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press)

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