Helen Frankenthaler at Baker Museum, Naples, Florida

The late work of Helen Frankenthaler are the subject of an exhibition at the Baker Museum, in Naples, Florida presented until 27th November 2022. It features ten paintings and twenty works on paper dating from 1990 to 2003. A member of the second generation of postwar American abstract painters, she is widely credited with playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting.

“A line, color, shapes, spaces, all do one thing for and within themselves, and yet do something else, in relation to everything that is going on within the four sides [of the canvas]. A line is a line, but [also] is a color. . . . It does this here, but that there. The canvas surface is flat and yet the space extends for miles. What a lie, what trickery—how beautiful is the very idea of painting.” —Helen Frankenthaler said about her incredible exploration of surface and material.

Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, Frankenthaler expanded the possibilities of abstract painting while referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. In later years, diverse media and processes were used in her oeuvre, as she shifted from painting canvas on the floor to using larger sheets of paper laid out on the floor or on tabletops. The continuity, both in content and execution between the late work (post-1990) and the prior works, is remarkable.