The New York City-based Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, established and endowed by the artist during her lifetime, is dedicated to promoting greater public interest in and understanding of the visual arts. It supports the artist’s legacy through a variety of initiatives, including exhibitions, loans of artworks, research and publications, conservation, grants, and educational programs for the public and the scholarly community. As the principal beneficiary of Frankenthaler’s estate, it additionally maintains an archive of original papers and materials pertaining to her life and work and a collection of her artwork in a variety of media.
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011), whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. An heir of first-generation Abstract Expressionism, she brought together in her work – with prodigious inventiveness and singular beauty – a conception of the canvas as both a formalized field and an arena for gestural drawing. She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. One of the foremost colorists of our time, she produced a body of work whose impact on contemporary art has been profound. Her work is represented in museum collections worldwide and has been the subject of numerous national and international exhibitions and substantial publications.