Helen Frankenthaler

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American artist; one of the foremost contemporary abstract painters whose work was recognized by 1949. Her first solo exhibition was at 23, in 1952. Her paintings are lyrical and sensuous, color, shapes and edges, purely physical, many monumental works. She used an evocative staining technique, thinned-down oils that soaked into unprimed canvas. Later she turned to acrylics, lithographs and works on paper. Her father, a Supreme Court Justice, provided a privileged Park Avenue Jewish background for the family, including two older sisters, of cultural and educational opportunities. She showed artistic ability from the age of ten. Her father died when she was 11. By the time she was15, she had discovered her passion for painting. Attending Bennington College at 17, she studied and painted. Her first trip to Europe was in the summer of 1948 at age 20. The following year she received her inheritance and moved into her own New York apartment. She graduated Bennington in 1949 and joined a group of New York City artists, later known as the second generation of abstract expressionists. She was one of a few fledgling painters who had the insight and the opportunity to read the beginnings of a new phase of art as it first appeared on the walls of a few courageous galleries. On 4/06/1958 she married Robert Motherwell, a leading artist of the first generation of abstract expressionists. Their honeymoon in Europe was her fifth trip abroad. They remained married for 13 years. She died after a long unspecified illness at her Darien, CT home on December 27, 2011. Link to Wikipedia biography