Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011)

Helen Frankenthaler's series Thanksgiving Day comprises of a series of seventy-one tiles, each unique, painted over the Thanksgiving weekend of 1973. Painting during a holiday was typical for Frankenthaler: ‘It’s just for the time I am totally creating a work. I am obsessed and the energy flows, the ideas flow’ (Jacobson Gallery, Helen Frankenthaler: Paper is Painting, 2010). Inspired by Miro’s ceramic wall at the Guggenheim Museum, Frankenthaler has experimented with painting on stoneware at a ceramic studio in upstate New York. Thus galvanised, she prepared tiles to paint over Thanksgiving weekend. Every tile was the same size and shape, but each was a unique creation, showcasing the full range of Frankenthaler’s abstract expressionist aesthetic.