A discussion about Helen Frankenthaler’s work and its connection to French art and culture. Participants included John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art; Distinguished Curator and Lecturer at the Princeton University Art Museum; and Consultant for Special Projects at Gagosian Gallery; Douglas Dreishpoon, Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné and Chief Curator Emeritus at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Joachim Pissarro, Bershad Professor of Art History at Hunter College of the City University of New York and Director of the Hunter College Galleries; and artist Pat Steir.

Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, one of the nation’s leading residencies for emerging visual artists, received a $250,000 gift from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. The funds provided for a new studio building which was constructed on its rural campus in central Maine.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, June 1986. Photo by Barbara N. Lapcek

The panel focused on Helen Frankenthaler’s creative process, methods, and materials, as well as public reception of the artist’s works.

Throughout her career, Frankenthaler worked with a variety of print publishers to push the medium in new directions. No Rules featured work executed over four decades and examined her inventive and groundbreaking approach to the woodcut.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Freefall, 1993, Hand-dyed paper in 15 colors and 12 color woodcut from 1 plate of 21 woodblocks, 78 1/2 x 60 1/2 inches (199.4 x 153.7 cm). © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

This exhibition comprised a selection of large paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, focusing on nature as a longstanding inspiration and including the full range of styles and techniques that she explored over five decades of work.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Milkwood Arcade, 1963, Acrylic on canvas, 86 1/2 x 80 3/4 inches (219 x 203 cm). © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The first major exhibition of Helen Frankenthaler's work in Paris in more than fifty years included fourteen paintings and two works on paper, several not exhibited since the early 1960s.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, The Red Sea, 1959. Oil and charcoal on sized, primed canvas with painted wood frame, 69 5/8 × 68 1/2 inches