Helen Frankenthaler was born in New York in 1928 where she was to spend most of her life. She studied at a number of art schools and was taught at one stage by Hofmann. By 1950 she had met many of the main figures of Abstract Expressionism. In 1958 she married the painter Robert Motherwell.

Frankenthaler became the first American painter after Jackson Pollock to see the implications of the color staining of raw canvas to create an integration of color and ground in which foreground and background cease to exist. "Mountains and Sea" (1952) Frankenthaler's first "stained painting," marked a turning point in her career. According to the critic, Clement Greenberg, this painting was the 'first monument of Post-Painterly Abstraction,' and it is certainly one of the most important works in the 'Colour-Field' style. In "Mountains and Sea", Frankenthaler poured paint directly onto the unprimed surface of a canvas, allowing the color to soak into its support, rather than painting on top of an already sealed canvas as was customary. This highly intuitive process, known as "stain painting," became the hallmark of her style and enabled her to create color-filled canvases that seemed to float on air.

Frankenthaler employs an open composition, frequently building around a free-abstract central image and also stressing the picture edge. The irregular central motifs float within a rectangle, which, in turn, is surrounded by irregular light and dark frames. These frames create the feeling that the center of the painting is opening up in a limited but defined depth. She took from Pollock the notion of fusing drawing and painting, translating this idea into her own suggestive, mysterious calligraphy.

In 1960 Frankenthaler made her first prints. Since then, she has worked with a variety of printmaking techniques in addition to painting, using each of these media to explore pictorial space through the interaction of color and line on a particular surface. One of her most successful prints is "Essence Mulberry " (1977) inspired by an exhibit of medieval prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Helen Frankenthaler's art is held in the collection of every major museum of modern art. The stain technique she made famous is still an integral part of her work and it can be seen running through her entire oeuvre. Although the paintings are abstract, a strong suggestion of landscape is often apparent, and they have been praised for their lyrical qualities.