PRESENTATION: Helen Frankenthaler-A Grand Sweep
Helen Frankenthaler, whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. A member of the second generation of postwar American abstract painters, she is widely credited with playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstraction, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in highly personal ways. She produced a body of work whose impact on contemporary art has been profound and continues to grow.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: MoMA Archive
The exhibition “A Grand Sweep”, is an installation of five paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, this presentation marks the artist’s first monographic moment at the MoMA since her 1989 retrospective. Ranging from the 1950s through the 1980s, the installation offers a succinct exploration of Frankenthaler’s pioneering contributions to postwar American painting. Anchoring the installation is “Toward Dark” (1988), a recent acquisition generously gifted by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation that exemplifies the artist’s expressive gesture and compositional boldness. Paintings from previous decades set the stage for this late nocturne; among the other works on view is “Jacob’s Ladder” (1957), which Frankenthaler described as developing “into shapes symbolic of an exuberant figure and ladder,” leading her to name it after a favorite work in El Museo Nacional del Prado, José de Ribera’s “Jacob’s Dream” (1639). The installation also includes “Chairman of the Board” (1971), a work that signals the artist’s confident monumentality and compositional ambition.
Describing her painting “Chairman of the Board” (1971), Helen Frankenthaler said that the work “was about a grand sweep. I had the basic idea in my head—I knew how the lines would dance in. I felt sure of myself.” This statement speaks to the artist’s ambition to paint on a monumental scale, and her confidence in doing so, two decades after her breakthrough moment at the height of Abstract Expressionism in midcentury New York. At the same time, the phrase—a grand sweep—also reflects the expansive arc of Frankenthaler’s long career and its continuous innovations. The paintings gathered here offer a succinct exploration of Frankenthaler’s constant experimentation. In the 1950s, the artist developed a signature technique of pouring thinned oil paint onto raw canvas, allowing the medium to soak into the support. The result was a uniquely atmospheric language of abstraction. By the early 1960s, she shifted to acrylic paint, which allowed for more defined edges and led to a new emphasis on shape. Attentive to the relationship between painting and landscape, Frankenthaler considered these forms in terms that evoke geography, as “districts” or “territories.” By the late 1980s, such material investigations yielded compositions like the moodily resonant “Toward Dark” (1988), a recent acquisition making its MoMA debut. This presentation invites visitors to experience the depth, evolution, and enduring power of Frankenthaler’s art. With this exhibition, MoMA embraces the scale and ambition of her vision, offering an immersive encounter with her practice in one of the Museum’s most dramatic spaces.
Photo: Helen Frankenthaler. Chairman of the Board, 1971. Acrylic and felt-tip pen on canvas, 6′ 10 1/16″ x 16′ 2 5/16″ (208.4 x 493.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Nina and Gordon Bunshaft Bequest. © 2025 Helen Frankenthaler / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital Image © 2025 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Info: Curators: Samantha Friedman and Elizabeth Wickham, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), 11 West 53 Street, Manhattan, New York, Ny, USA, Duration: 18/11/2025-8/2/2026, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:30-17:30, Fri 10:30-20:30, https://www.moma.org/
