Helen Frankenthaler

Contentment Island, 2004 screenprint 37″  x  30 1/2″

With the passing of Helen Frankenthaler at 83 years of age, on Dec. 26th, came the loss of a truly great American artist and a Hamilton-Selway favorite. Frankenthaler made a name for herself in the early 1950’s through her distinct style of painting. At the time, she was a pioneer in what is known as color-field painting and believed that a “really good picture looks as if it all happened at once.” Her goal in painting was to arrive at a picture that seized the eye and the mind at the same time. She would achieve this by blurring the line between image and background. Frankenthaler’s prints capture the dream-like atmosphere of her often monumental paintings remarkably well, as you can see with the attached piece, “Contentment Island”. She will be very, very missed.