Helen Frankenthaler

I am sorry to read of the death of one of my favorite artists, Helen Frankenthaler. Her non-objective, color oriented works have always inspired me. She was curious, prolific and versatile, exploring printmaking alongside her primarily medium, painting.

Many art historical accounts miscredit Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis with originating Color Field painting, in which oil paint was thinned with turpentine and applied to raw canvas. I was pleased to read Roberta Smith clarify this in her NY Times tribute to Frankenthaler on December 27th. Noland and Louis visited Frankenthaler's studio and saw her working this way before they experimented with the process themselves.