Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules

04.11.2025 - 09.28.2025

Organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Curator: Douglas Dreishpoon, Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné
Dates: April 11 to September 28, 2025
Sponsor: BBVA Foundation

- Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules celebrates the legacy of a pioneering artist who never stopped exploring new ways to make abstract art.

- Comprising thirty of Frankenthaler’s poetic abstractions created between 1953 and 2002, the exhibition also features select paintings and sculptures by some of her contemporaries—Anthony Caro, Morris Louis, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and David Smith, highlighting the synergies between these artists.

- Frankenthaler played a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting and is best known for her expanded use of the soak-stain technique.

- The artist also adhered to a shared belief when it came to making art: No rules! Whether you were a painter or a sculptor (or both), the mantra was the same: no rules meant never being complacent about how your art got made, the materials used, or what it might look like.

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules, the largest exhibition ever held in Spain dedicated to this great artist pioneer of abstraction. The show, sponsored by the BBVA Foundation, Strategic Trustee of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao from 1997, and organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in collaboration with the Museum, celebrates Helen Frankenthaler’s revolutionary art through a chronological journey that follows her prolific career over six decades.

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