Frankenthaler was born in New York City as the youngest child of a New York Supreme Court justice. After studying a t Bennington College in Vermont, Frankenthaler returned to New York in 1950 to pursue painting. It was during this period that she encountered the Abstract Expressionist movement for the first time and was heavily influenced by the work of Jackson Pollock. A short time thereafter, she married fellow Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell. Soon developing her own style, Frankenthaler began experimenting with stain painting and using large fields of intense color. During the 1970s she expanded her scope with woodcuts, sculpture, and color printmaking.
Demonstrating the sense of structure that is characteristic of Frankenthaler’s work at this time, the unpainted surface of the canvas is in stark contrast to the expanses of green, blue, black, and white colors. On the left side of the composition an oblong black shape is stacked on top of a green geometrical field. The lower right side is filled with a field of white color. Connecting the two halves of the painting is a single blue line stretching at an angle across almost the entire length of the canvas. The colors found in nature inspired Frankenthaler’s choice of color.
Though influenced by Jackson Pollock’s “drip” method, Frankenthaler’s technique differed. She incorporated thinned-down oil paint to create broad areas of color and translucent washes of paint that soaked, or stained, directly onto the canvas, allowing the texture of the fabric to show through. Frankenthaler used rollers and squeegees to push and blot the paint. In 1962 Frankenthaler switched from oil paint, which tends to fade, to water-based acrylic paint. In Blue Rail, painted after this medium change, colored shapes are juxtaposed against one another. The straight blue line connecting the shapes near the top of the canvas was not stained, but instead painted with a ruler.
Even in 1969 the United States was still feeling the transition from the 1950s to the 1960s. There was a general feeling of moving away from the conservative fifties and into a time of revolutionary thinking. Amid war and social turmoil, American culture flourished. Although the art world was undergoing a major upheaval from Abstract Expressionism to the culture-oriented Pop Art movement, Frankenthaler remained firmly grounded in Abstract Expressionism. Today, art historians refer to her innovative style within the movement as “Color Field.”
