Among Friends
The works in this section provide a fuller context for the exhibition. Some came to Helen Frankenthaler as gifts, tokens of friendship. Others were purchased by the artist. Two are museum loans.
Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis were some of the first artists to see Frankenthaler’s Mountains and Sea (1952) at her studio shortly after it was finished. Both were familiar with Pollock’s dense abstractions. Frankenthaler’s lightly stained canvas, full of light and space, offered an alternative approach.
Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell were married for thirteen years (1958–71). During this time, they shared family and friends, spent summers on Cape Cod and in Europe, and exchanged artistic ideas. Motherwell’s Iberia (1958) was painted the same year the couple traveled to Spain on their honeymoon.
Mark and Mell Rothko were also part of the couple’s artistic circle. What Pollock was to Frankenthaler in the 1950s, Rothko was in the early 1960s: the catalyst for another kind of abstract image.
Frankenthaler met David Smith through the American art critic Clement Greenberg. After her marriage to Motherwell, Smith became a beloved member of the family. Smith’s Portrait of the Eagle’s Keeper (1948–49), one of Frankenthaler’s earliest art acquisitions, remained with her always.