Helen Frankenthaler Dual Exhibition in Rome and Venice

In 2019, Italy honors Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) with two parallel exhibitions: a focused show at Gagosian in Rome covering 1974-1983, and an anthological exhibition at Palazzo Grimani in Venice during the Biennale. Both are curated by John Elderfield, a critic and expert on the artist. The Rome exhibition highlights Frankenthaler's shift after moving to Connecticut, where she sought greater complexity and completeness in her work, moving away from Greenbergian flatness. The pivotal painting "Sea change" introduces a marine horizon and three-dimensionality, linking her to Turner and Venetian atmospheric painting. Frankenthaler, known for the "soak stain" technique, produced a dozen large-scale works in this period that exhibit a more epic, three-dimensional quality, distancing her from orthodox Color Field aesthetics. The article notes her early influence on Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland with "Mountains and Sea" (1952).