“With the passage of t.mes the exceptional quality of this series of paintings becomes more and more evident. The aspects of the pictures which first seemed so startling-such as the deliberate use of the floorboard pattern as well as the incorporation into the images of smudging from the very floors- have in t.mes come to be seen as hallmarks of a particularly creative, free, spontaneous and brilliant moment in this artist’s career.”
Burnished with vivid yellow, radiant green, and diaphanous orange, Winter Glow evinces Helen Frankenthaler’s sumptuous use of color and is a paragon of the artist’s venerated floorboard paintings, a groundbreaking and pivotal early series named for the distinctive linear impressions on the canvas made by the floorboards of Frankenthaler’s studio. Described by the artist herself as “wild experiments and surprises”, Frankenthaler’s floorboard paintings represent a spontaneous and inventive period of the artist’s practice as she transitioned from structure and geometry towards the expansive and experimental works that would later define her oeuvre. Notably, other paintings from this period of Frankenthaler’s practice are held in esteemed institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Attesting to its significance, Winter Glow was selected as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s “Art in Embassies” program where it was loaned to Ambassador and Mrs. Arthur Goldberg’s residence from November 1965 to January 1968, exemplifying the innovation and importance of modern American art. Further distinguished by its provenance, Winter Glow was originally in the possession of Frankenthaler’s sister, Marjorie Iseman, before becoming part of the esteemed Alden collects ion, where it has remained for the past 40 years.
Winter Glow is saturated with luminous tones, emerging in misty hazes and pooling organically across the surface of the canvas. The painting’s vibrant hues are tempered by a frosty blur at the interior that blooms and then dissipates in front of the eye into a spray of vivid tangerine. It is within this ephemeral core that Frankenthaler’s wild creativity is most palpable, as the softly disembodied color captures imprints of the wooden floorboards of her studio, alluding to the artist’s tactile process. Subverting the flattened surface texture inherent to Frankenthaler’s method of pouring diluted paint and intimately fusing pigment and canvas, Winter Glow suggests a hidden depth, a well of color and energy accelerating to the surface.
The painting’s serene surface is energized by undulating passages of vibrant color moving towards the “total color image” that would become a hallmark of her later work. Winter Glow is framed by a sweep of glowing yellow pigment that darkens into a halo of saturated ochre. Frankenthaler's candied color evokes the softness and vivacity of Matisse's fauvist paintings, drawing inspiration from his brilliant yet tempered tones and luxurious application of pigment. A swath of vibrant green travels the length of the right side of the canvas, its linearity reinforced by the vertical impressions of the floor stamped into the pigment, the only geometric elements in an amorphous and organic composition. Frankenthaler’s poetic appellations embrace the organic nature of these works, evoking the passing of seasons through titles like April, Thaw, and of course, Winter Glow.
“She turned face down the stretched canvases on her studio floor ... pried them off the next day, unstretched them, then saw on their reverse sides the familiar sight of softly disembodied color surprisingly trapped in the imprint of the floorboards. She subsequently added more opaque, intense areas to sharpen the softness — usually to frame it — and thereby produced extremely commanding, stately works that unquestionably bear her mark and affirm her stylistic continuity."
Working directly on the wood-paneled floor of her studio in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Frankenthaler experimented with staining her canvases with diluted acrylic paint in sumptuous hues. Winter Glow is particularly resplendent due to Frankenthaler’s reverse saturation technique, in which the artist turned the canvas to its reverse to reveal what she referred to as a “sort of a stained memory of what I’d overworked on the other side” (the artist quoted in: Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Helen Frankenthaler, Composing with Color: Paintings 1962-1963, 2014, p. 19) The technique trapped an impression of the floorboards into the canvas in saturated linear bands of pigment, and resulted in a transcendent image described by art historian Barbara Rose as “a mysteriously hazy image of mists and transparent vapors,” with floating compositions that recall the early work of Mark Rothko (Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Helen Frankenthaler, Composing with Color: Paintings 1962-1963, 2014). A product of this radical process, Winter Glow is incredibly dynamic, rapturously fluctuating between rich hues and framed by swaths of opaque color that envelope the miraculous impressions. Vibrant and organic, Winter Glow’s rich tones anticipate the development of Frankenthaler’s abstract vocabulary throughout the remaining years of the 1960s, epitomizing the emphatic embrace of expressive freedom and spontaneity that defines her celebrated oeuvre.
