Helen Frankenthaler: Painting without Rules
Co-organized by Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York
Curated by Douglas Dreishpoon, Director, Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné
From 27 September 2024 to 2 February 2025 at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Helen Frankenthaler: Painting without Rules explores the poetic abstractions of one of the most significant American artists of the twentieth century in the biggest exhibition ever dedicated in Italy.
Surveying works created between 1953 and 2002, from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and on loan from museums and private collections, the show will also go through the lens of her artistic affinities, influences, and friendships featuring works by Frankenthaler’s contemporaries, including works from her own personal collection, such as Anthony Caro, Morris Louis, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Anne Truitt.
Eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters, Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) played a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Active for more than six decades, Frankenthaler emerged in the American art scene with a no-rules approach to painting, protean imagination, and improvisational skills that reshaped the narrative not only for women artists at the time, but the genre itself. With her innovative soak-stain technique, Frankenthaler explored a new relationship between color and form, expanding the potential of abstract painting in ways that continue to inspire artists today.
Working with color and space, abstraction and poetry Helen Frankenthaler distinguished herself by her unique ability to combine technique and imagination, research and improvisation, going beyond established canons, pursuing a new idea of freedom in painting.