HELEN FRANKENTHALER (1928 - 2011)
Born in 1928 in New York City, where she was to spend most of her life.  Frankenthaler became the first American painter after Jackson Pollock to pursue the technique of color staining of raw canvas in order to create an integration of color in which foreground and background cease to exist.  According to critic Clement Greenberg, using this technique she created the “first monument of Post-Painterly Abstraction” in 1952.  Throughout her career, Helen Frankenthaler won a number of awards and distinctions.  Although the paintings are abstract, a strong suggestion of landscape is often apparent, and the works have been praised for their lyrical qualities.