Helen Frankenthaler Quotes about Art

Helen Frankenthaler was a famous American abstract painter and printmaker associated with the Abstraction Expressionism art movement. She is best known for her large abstract paintings which were fluid and spontaneous in nature. Famous Helen Frankenthaler artworks include “Mountains and Sea”, “Floe IV”, “Hotel Cro-Magnon”, “Small’s Paradise”, “Persian Garden”, “Tutti-Fruitti” and “Bilbao”.

Mini biography: Born Helen Frankenthaler on the 12th of December, 1928 in New York City, New York, United States of America. Her mother was Martha Lowenstein and her father Alfred Frankenthaler was a New York State Supreme Court judge. Frankenthaler married the abstract expressionist painter Robert Motherwell in 1958 and they divorced in 1971. She then married investment banker Stephen M. DuBrul, Jr. in 1994. The artist died on the 27th of December, 2011 in Darien, Connecticut, USA at the age of 83.

List of Famous Helen Frankenthaler Art Quotes

The artist has to have a dialogue with what is being created. Helen Frankenthaler

Total abstraction was something intellectual to me. I didn’t feel it; I could talk about a Mondrian but it didn’t occur to me to do it. Helen Frankenthaler

A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once. Helen Frankenthaler

I think when you’re really painting, involved in a painting, what goes on in the art world doesn’t matter. When you’re making what you have to you’re totally involved in the act. Helen Frankenthaler

I feel, essentially, that I am a painter and involved in paint, per se, and the beauty of paint, but there is something equally exquisite about seeing the acid bath make something bleed on copper or using a sanding wheel on a piece of mahogany. Helen Frankenthaler

Never force yourself to like a painting if something in you says it’s not the best. Helen Frankenthaler

Earlier Kandinsky and Gorky had led me into what is now called “Abstract Expressionist” painting; but these came after all the Cubist training and exercise. Helen Frankenthaler

When I am in pursuit of ‘a place to go’ from where I am, I often go back to nature, the figure, or still-life in order to trigger a leap into the unknown. Helen Frankenthaler

I think all totally abstract pictures—the best ones that really come off—Newman, Pollock, Noland—have tremendous space; perspective space despite the emphasis on flat surface. Helen Frankenthaler

I think black can be a wonderful color. Helen Frankenthaler

People like to think of me as a colorist—and therefore where are the reds and the blues and the greens and everything else. But a colorist can also be someone who works in chiaroscuro. Helen Frankenthaler

I’d rather risk an ugly surprise than rely on things I know I can do. The whole business of spotting; the small area of color in a big canvas; how edges meet; how accidents are controlled; all this fascinates me, though it is often where I am most facile and most seducible by my own talent. Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler Abstract Painting

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Related or similar popular artists and celebrities include: Jackson Pollock, Elaine de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Lee Krasner, Robert Ryman, and other Famous American Artists.