Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler was an American painter who lived from 1928 to 2011, a central figure of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, best known for developing the soak-stain technique in the early 1950s, pouring thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas so that it soaked into the fabric rather than sitting on the surface, beginning with her 1952 painting Mountains and Sea. The technique became foundational to the later Color Field movement and directly influenced painters Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, and she continued working across painting and printmaking for six decades.