In New York in the 1950s, The Irascibles was the name given to a group of Abstract Expressionists who protested against the Metropolitan Museum’s “Monster” exhibition, “American Painting Today – 1950.” Eighteen artists signed the boycott, including Rothko, Motherwell, de Kooning, and Pollock. Thus began the process of creating an image of hard-working, hard-drinking, fierce, avant-garde male artists. Unfortunately, as is often the case in history, women were excluded except to support men – Lee Krasner with Pollock, and Elaine de Kooning with Willem. Fortunately, thanks in part to their famous husbands, some of these women have been able to make names for themselves as artists. But the road has never been easy for women, in any field.
In the same year, Helen Frankenthaler, an educated and wealthy young woman, entered. Because she was beautiful and had enough money to train as an artist and rent a large studio in New York, she caught the attention of the powerful art critic Clement Greenberg. During their nearly six years together, they often went to see exhibitions. In 1956, she separated from Greenberg and traveled to Europe to visit museums. Her work became freer and more self-confident, which was not surprising, since she was no longer under his stubborn gaze. In 1958 she married Robert Motherwell, a member of the Irascibles family and a famous artist in his own right. She stayed with him for 13 years, and throughout that time, they each maintained their own individual studios. During this period, in 1960, she had her first retrospective exhibition at the Jewish Museum. She was 31 years old.
Sure, being beautiful and wealthy opened many doors for Frankenthaler, but that’s not the real story. Because she had her family’s money, she could be independent, work in her studio on her own terms, get the training she felt she needed, and arrive in New York when the art scene was vibrant and innovative. We also need to consider what the men in her life took from her, not just as an attractive accessory, but because she was so intelligent and an independent thinker. Like many women, she was a force to be reckoned with. She never stopped experimenting, and took great risks in her work that led to pioneering techniques, such as her wet paintings (large-scale, unprimed canvases created by pouring paint directly onto the surface). And this was just the beginning. She also made prints, woodblocks and sculptures, and designed sets and costumes for the Royal Ballet. For 50 years, she has never worked on a series, always pushing herself to find new ways to create. She is a pioneer in the art world.
Fast forward to the present. Two years ago, the Kunstmuseum Basel appointed its second female director in more than 350 years, and the first American to lead it. (Institutions like the Met and MoMA have not yet had a female director. There is almost no other American leading a major European art institution, although a number of Europeans lead major American institutions.) I recently had a long conversation with the director Elena Filipovic—an art historian by training, who has now been in the job for two years. Previously, she served as director of Kunsthalle Basel for nearly 10 years, another important institution in the city dedicated to emerging young artists. “Helen Frankenthaler” is the first major show by an American artist that Filipovitch has programmed at the museum. In the months before starting her job, she negotiated Frankenthaler’s gift Riverhead (1962) From the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation to the Museum. “It is a bold, monumental example of Frankenthaler’s greatness, and it holds its place alongside major abstract works by men who were alone in the room for a very long time,” Filipovic said. “Her arrival at the Kunst-Museum proved the catalyst for the artist’s first institutional exhibition in all of Switzerland, and the largest in Europe. Helen Frankenthaler is one of those artists whose influence is everywhere, yet whose central place in the history of post-war abstraction has never been fully recognized, and even less so in Europe.”
The exhibition showcases 52 years of Frankenthaler’s work. An important addition is the group of paintings she painted in response to other artists – Derain, Mondrian, Fabritius, Marie Laurencin, Titian and Hiroshige. The museum was able to borrow these specific pieces to hang alongside Frankenthaler’s piece, giving viewers a deeper look at how unique it is. She did not copy her sources verbatim, but rather captured their moods, colors and basic feelings. With Edouard Manet Fish (still life)For example, she explores the work through blocks of color, a black slash for the knife, a wave of white in the middle for the fish, and a block of red brick above it for the copper bowl. The contrast of scale is also striking – her expansive canvases sit alongside smaller ones. John Elderfield, who wrote the major study of her work, calls these responses “paraphrasing.” Karen Wilkin, a friend of Frankenthaler, wrote an excellent and insightful article in the museum catalogue; She and Frankenthaler had been planning to stage a show with exactly these comparisons before the artist’s death.
Discussing Frankenthaler’s “privilege” with Filipovic, she said: “At a time when women were expected to be doting wives without professional aspirations or, at best, secretaries, Frankenthaler’s financial independence gave her the freedom to devote herself entirely to painting. These are not unimportant details. But the story sometimes told is that she came from privilege, was beautiful, dated Clement Greenberg – then the most influential critic of his generation – and later married a fellow artist.” But this framing diminishes her true artistic achievements rather than acknowledging the misogyny inherent in the culture of the time. Yes, Frankenthaler used her family’s financial support to give herself the freedom to take artistic risks rather than produce the kinds of paintings that would have been expected of an artist at the time, and regarding the men in her life: The assumption is that the flow of thought, influence and power went in one direction only Frankenthaler because he was formulating a new way of looking at art at the time and writing about it? How much did Motherwell take from Frankenthaler? Because between the lines of the stories that refer to the men in her life there is an assumption that the influence moved towards her, and not from her as well.
Filipovic feels that for many people who do not yet know Frankenthaler’s work, this exhibition will be a revelation. “Many visitors may ask themselves: Why haven’t we seen more of her in European collections? Why is the history of Abstract Expressionism so often taught primarily through its male protagonists? Women artists have not simply been marginalized; many are essentially unrecognized. Why has it taken so long to rethink the ways in which art history is taught and represented in public institutions? The idea of a masterpiece is never neutral or divinely ordained. It is constructed through markets, collectors, institutions, critics and history. And all of this reflects broader societal structures, Including the ways in which women and artists of color are still viewed differently from the hallowed figures who dominate so much of art history. To me, there is an urgent need to reconsider the histories we have inherited. People often imagine that such exhibitions simply add neglected figures to an existing story, but Frankenthaler does more than simply expand the narrative of Abstract Expressionism—she fundamentally reshapes the myths of tortured male genius through which Abstract Expressionism has often been framed: Bravado, excess, self-destruction, heroism, and in the process, women artists whose works were equally radical and important were often pushed to the margins of the story.
The exhibition catalogue, designed by Verena Gerlach and published by Deutscher Kunstverlag, is beautifully illustrated and contains excellent essays by curators Anita Haldemann and Karen Wilken. The front and back covers reproduce Frankenthaler’s colours April mood (1974), and when opened, the covers extend to approximately 3.5 feet—a fitting reminder of the artist’s scale. Frankenthaler’s paintings are often huge: 60, 70, 80 inches wide, and one measures approximately 14 feet by 15 feet. She had things to say, and she said them for over 50 years without stopping. She has long carried the image of a distinguished artist, but she is something much more complex and deserves more attention. It is significant that the Kunstmuseum Basel is now giving it this attention; 2028 will mark the 100th anniversary of Frankenthaler’s birth, and there will be major shows at SFMOMA, the Whitney and the National Gallery in Washington, followed by a tour. finally.
“Helen Frankenthaler“On view at the Kunstmuseum Basel until August 23, 2026.
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