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Over the past decade or so, the US artist Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) has come out of the shadows cast by her more famous Abstract Expressionist contemporaries, with several important shows and publications dedicated to her. This year is no different, with the reissuing of John Elderfield’s 1989 monograph and a sweeping survey at the Palazzo Strozzi, which opened last month. The show is curated by Douglas Dreishpoon, who is the director of the Helen Frankenthaler catalogue raisonné project and also the co-author of a 2022 book about the latter stages of her career (Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1988-2009). Here, he selects five of the best books to get to grips with Frankenthaler’s life and work.
Frankenthaler (1989, reissued 2024) by John Elderfield
“A seminal monograph by a foremost Helen Frankenthaler scholar, revised and expanded to include the last chapter of the painter’s life. An indispensable primer for anyone interested in Frankenthaler’s impressive achievements over the course of 60 years.”
“The heroine Paint”: After Frankenthaler (2015) edited by Katy Siegel
“A rich anthology, consisting of historical and contemporary texts, artists’ statements, visual chronologies, archival documents and materials gleaned from popular media, that opens up new perspectives on Frankenthaler’s life and work, and its generational impact on younger artists.”
Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art (2018) by Mary Gabriel
“Before Ninth Street Women, no one had written so perceptively about the female-centric, bohemian milieu that forged Frankenthaler’s artistic sensibility. Having this part of her life story mapped out so meticulously helps to better understand what came afterwards.”
Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown (2018) by Lise Motherwell and Elizabeth Smith
“The summers that Frankenthaler spent in Provincetown, Massachusetts (1950-69), in the company of her husband, the painter Robert Motherwell, family and close friends, were nothing short of prolific. This catalogue documents these halcyon years through personal anecdotes, scholarly essays and an illustrated chronology.”
Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York (2021) by Alexander Nemerov
“A nuanced account of Frankenthaler’s artistic coming of age in downtown Manhattan, among the temperamental minions of the New York School. The figure that emerges from Nemerov’s poetic narrative rises in the reader’s imagination as a creative force: fiercely determined, endearingly human.”
• Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, until 26 January 2025