Helen Frankenthaler: Composing with Color

Book excerpt: This exhibition catalogue offers an in-depth look at a brief but critical period in Helen Frankenthaler's career, the years 1962 and 1963, when she "composed with color" rather than with line, resulting in the freer compositions that would become the hallmark of her long and prolific career. These years are notable not only for her development of a personal vocabulary of abstraction, but also for her early experiments with acrylic, rather than oil, paint. The marked new direction of her painting is evident in these vivid canvases, presented beautifully as full-page plates.