Helen Frankenthaler Working

Helen Frankenthaler, on the other hand, broke the Lee mold and was such a crazy genius that I think some people don’t even know that she was married to Robert Motherwell. Or they do know that and they think to themselves, Was he worthy? This beautiful series above was taken by Ernst Haas in 1969.

Now, it’s Helen, who was an Uptown Girl from birth, so you have to understand that there was also a little bit of this-

Photo by Gordon Parks, c. 1957

Photo by Michael Fredericks

Helen Frankenthaler with Alexander Liberman, in her studio, New York City, 1967 Photo by Dan Budnick

And at the end of the day, she was coming home to Motherwell and this-

Photographed at Yale by Sedat Pakay

Photo by William Grigsby, originally published for the article “Artists as Collectors” in the November/December 1967 issue of Art in America. Drool. But always, she was back at this-

Photo by Hans Namuth, 1987

Photo by Hans Namuth, 1984

Photo by Alexander Liberman

Photo by Alexander Liberman

Helen Frankenthaler in her studio in Darien, Connecticut, 2003. Photo by Suzanne DeChillo.