
Southern Exposure
An abstract work by Helen Frankenthaler titled Southern Exposure, exemplifying her color field painting style. The piece demonstrates the artist's innovative approach to abstract expressionism through gestural mark-making and vibrant color.
- Spotted At
- Auction House · Sotheby's
🔨 Auction Lot
Important Prints & Multiples: Part I
October 15, 2021
Estimate: $8,000 – $12,000
Lot 12
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Morris Louis
American · b. 1912
Louis adopted a nearly identical soak stain technique after seeing Frankenthalers work, pouring thinned acrylic paint onto unprimed canvas to create luminous color field compositions with the same translucent, fabric absorbed quality visible here.

Kenneth Noland
American · b. 1924

Noland shared Frankenthalers direct application of stained color onto raw canvas, producing vibrant post war color field paintings where pigment and surface merge with the same lyrical abstraction and saturated hue relationships seen in this work.

Sam Gilliam
American · b. 1933

Gilliam extended the color staining tradition Frankenthaler pioneered, pouring and pooling paint across large unprimed canvases to achieve similarly dreamlike atmospheric color washes with the same gestural fluidity and vibrant chromatic expressiveness.
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