From September 27, 2024 to January 26, 2025, the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi presents Helen Frankenthaler. Painting without Rules, a major exhibition celebrating one of the most important artists of the 20th century, whose revolutionary exploration in painting is showcased through works from her production between 1953 and 2002 in dialogue with paintings and sculptures by contemporary artists, including Jackson Pollock, Morris Louis, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Anthony Caro, and Anne Truitt.

Organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and curated by Douglas Dreishpoon, Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné, the exhibition aims to highlight the innovative practice of this artist also through the lens of affinities, influences, and friendships that have marked her personal and creative life.

Through large canvases and sculptures by Frankenthaler and numerous works by other artists, the project stands as one of the most important exhibitions ever dedicated to the artist in Europe and the most comprehensive exhibition of her work ever realized in Italy, with loans - in addition to those from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in New York - from renowned museums and international collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the ASOM Collection, and the Levett Collection.

With her innovative soak-stain technique, Frankenthaler has indelibly marked the evolution of modern painting, in the sign of a new relationship between color, space, and form. The technique involved the application of diluted paint spread horizontally on untreated canvases, creating effects similar to watercolor, but on a large scale and with oil colors. Frankenthaler applied the paint with brushes or sponges, or directly from buckets, allowing it to expand and mix naturally, creating unique chromatic interactions marked by subtle transitions and translucent overlays.

Helen Frankenthaler. Painting without Rules celebrates an artist who challenged conventions and expanded the boundaries of painting with a bold and intuitive vision that broke traditional norms. Frankenthaler stands out, in fact, for a unique ability to combine abstraction and poetry, technique and imagination, control and improvisation, expanding her practice beyond established canons in search of a new freedom in painting.