Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler was born on December 28, 1928 in Manhattan New York and died in 2011. She attended the exclusive Brearley School in Manhattan and the Dalton School where her art teacher was Rufino Tamayo. She later went on to study painting at Bennington College under the tutelage of Paul Feeley, an academic cubist and then studied with Hans Hoffman over the summer of 1950. One of Helen’s greatest influences comes from Jackson Pollock and the way he utilized drip painting. She took the technique of drip painting one step further, using turpentine to create abstract imagery-stain paintings. In the 1960’s she took paint thinning even further, using acrylics instead of oils, a style that influenced a new generation of painters including Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis.