Laura Gascoigne

Ethereal and allusive, all nuance and no schmaltz: Helen Frankenthaler, at Dulwich Gallery, reviewed

The work of this pioneering painter was once dismissed as ‘merely beautiful’. Isn’t that enough?

All nuance and no schmaltz: ‘Cedar Hills’, 1983, by Helen Frankenthaler. Credit: © 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / ARS, NY and DACS, London / Crown Point Press, Oakland, CA
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  • Helen Frankenthaler: Radical Beauty

    Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 18 April

In 1950 the 21-year-old painter Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, went to an exhibition at New York’s Betty Parson’s Gallery that changed her whole perspective on art. ‘It was as if I suddenly went to a foreign country,’ she later recalled. ‘I wanted to live in this land; I had to live there, and master the language.

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