In 1950s New York, the Irascibles was the name given to a group of Abstract Expressionists who opposed the “monster” exhibition at the Met, “American Painting Today-1950.” 18 artists signed the boycott, including Rothko, Motherwell, de Kooning and Pollock. And so began the creation of images of hard-hitting, hard-drinking, aggressive, trailblazing male musicians. Unfortunately, too often throughout history, women have been left out without the support of men—Lee Krasner and Pollock, and Elaine De Kooning and Willem. Fortunately, thanks in part to their famous husbands, some of these women were able to make names for themselves as singers. But the road has never been easy for women, in any field.
That same year, in came Helen Frankenthaler, an educated, wealthy young woman. Because she was beautiful and had the money to train as an artist and rent a large studio in New York, she caught the eye of influential art critic Clement Greenberg. During their almost six years together, they often went to see shows. In 1956, she broke up with Greenberg and went to Europe, visiting museums. His work became easier and he became more confident—no wonder, since he no longer had his eye. She married Robert Motherwell in 1958, one of the Irascibles and a famous musician in his own right. He lived with her for 13 years, and during all that time, they each kept their own studios. During this time, in 1960, he received his first retrospective at the Jewish Museum. He was 31 years old.
Being good-looking and rich certainly opened many doors for Frankenthaler, but that’s not the real story. Because he had family money, he was able to be independent, work in his studio according to his will, get the training he felt he needed and come to New York where the art scene was charged with energy and innovation. We also need to consider what the men in her life took from her—not just as an attractive accessory, but because she was extremely intelligent and an independent thinker. Like many women, she had the power to be seen. He never stopped experimenting, taking huge risks with his work that led to innovative techniques, such as his stained-glass paintings (large, unrefined canvases created by pouring paint directly onto the surface). This was just the beginning. He also made prints, woodblocks and sculptures, and even designed sets and costumes for the Royal Ballet. For 50 years, he did not work in series, always pushing himself to find new creative ways. He is a pioneer in art.
Fast forward to now. Two years ago, the Kunstmuseum Basel hired only its second female director in more than 350 years—and its first American. (Institutions like the Met and MoMA have never had a female director. There is probably no other American leading a major European art institution, although a handful of Europeans lead major Americans.) I recently had a long conversation with director Elena Filipovic—an art historian by training, now two years on the job. Previously, he worked as the director of the Kunsthalle Basel for about 10 years, another important center in the city devoted to young, emerging artists. “Helen Frankenthaler” is the first major exhibition of the American artist that Filipovic has organized at the museum. Months before he started the job, he had discussed Frankenthaler’s offer Riverhead (1962) from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation to the museum. “It’s a bold, big example of Frankenthaler’s greatness, and it holds its own alongside key works of abstraction by men who have long been alone in the room,” Filipovic said. “Its arrival at the Kunstmuseum was the cause of the first institutional exhibition of the artist in all of Switzerland, and the largest in Europe. Helen Frankenthaler is one of those artists who have an influence everywhere, and yet their central place in the history of post-war withdrawal is still not fully acknowledged, and even less so in Europe.”
This exhibition covers 52 years of Frankenthaler’s career. An important addition is a group of paintings he made in response to other artists—Derain, Mondrian, Fabritius, Marie Laurencin, Titian and Hiroshige. The museum was able to borrow these particular pieces to hang alongside Frankenthaler, giving viewers a deeper look at just how singular he was. He did not literally copy his sources but captured their spirit, their color, their essential feeling. And Édouard Manet Fish (Still Alive)for example, he examines the work with blocks of his own color, the black blade of the knife, the white ice in the middle of the fish and the red brick on top of the copper pot. The contrast in scale is striking as well—his large canvases next to smaller abstract paintings. John Elderfield, who wrote a large monograph on his work, calls these responses “citations.” Karen Wilkin, a friend of Frankenthaler, wrote an excellent and insightful essay on the museum’s catalog; he was planning with Frankenthaler to make an exhibition of these comparisons before the artist died.
Discussing the “privilege” of Frankenthaler and Filipovic, he said: “At a time when women were expected to court wives without career aspirations or, at least, secretaries, Frankenthaler’s financial independence gave him the freedom to devote himself fully to painting. This is not an insignificant detail. The most influential critic of his generation—and later married fellow artist Robert Motherwell, but that frame diminishes his real artistic achievements rather than acknowledging the evils embedded in the culture of the time. Yes, Frankenthaler he used his family’s financial support to give himself the freedom to take artistic risks instead of producing the types of paintings that might be a woman in his time that the flow of intelligence, influence, and power went only one way but how much did Clement Greenberg take from Frankenthaler as he was developing a new way of looking at and writing about the art of Motherwell’s time?
Filipovic feels that for many people who are not familiar with Frankenthaler’s work, this exhibition will be a revelation. “Many visitors may wonder: Why haven’t we seen more of her in European collections? Why is the history of Abstract Expressionism often taught mainly through male protagonists? Women artists were not simply put aside; many were not well recognized. Why did it take so long to rethink the ways in which art history is taught and represented in public institutions. through markets, collectors, institutions, critics, and historical issues. And all this reflects the wider social structures, including ways women and painters of color who continue to be seen differently from these luminaries who hold so much of art history For me, there is a real urgency in revising the histories that we have inherited rather than expanding the narrative of Abstract Expressionism—it is basically reshaping the myth of the masculinity of victimization that Abstract Expressionism has been named after: swagger, excess, self-destruction, heroism.
The exhibition catalog, designed by Verena Gerlach and published by Deutscher Kunstverlag, is beautifully illustrated and features excellent essays by Anita Haldemann and Karen Wilkin. The front and back covers reproduce the colors of Frankenthaler April Mood (1974), and when unfolded, the covers extend about 3.5 meters—a fitting reminder of the artist’s scale. Frankenthaler’s paintings are often large: 60, 70, 80 inches wide, one measuring 14 feet by nearly 15 meters. He wanted to say it, and he said it for over 50 years, without stopping. He has long carried the image of a lucky artist, but he is something much more complex and requires a lot of attention. It is noteworthy that the Kunstmuseum Basel is giving him that attention now; 2028 will mark the 100th anniversary of Frankenthaler’s birth, and there will be major exhibitions at SFMOMA, the Whitney and the National Gallery in Washington, followed by tours. Finally.
“Helen Frankenthaler” is at the Kunstmuseum Basel until August 23, 2026.
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