HELEN FRANKENTHALER: Mountains and the Sea

Calla Lily ArtArleen Solomon RotchinComment

In 1952, the abstract painter was 23 years old when she painted Mountains and the Sea using a technique of her own invention that would pave the way for a new movement in art. 

She was celebrated as a painter of instinct, which she obviously was, but she was also very calculating in what she did.  The stress on the instinctive, while it was there, is also a gendered reading of her work—the idea that women are instinctive and men are intelligent.  Helen Frankenthaler was both.