In 1925, Rothko began studying under Arshile Gorky, with whom he shared a profuse interest in the psychological dimensions of European Surrealism. By 1947, the biomorphic forms of his Surrealist vocabulary were further reduced until giving way to the characteristic, non-objective compositions for which he would garner his renown. Within three years he would arrive at his signature style, painting variations of two or three soft-edged, luminescent rectangles, stacked weightlessly on top of one another, floating against a ground, rendered in ever-carefully considered combinations of color. His work in many ways gives form to the ephemeral–engaging a material investigation into the capacity for paint and color to communicate qualities of light, and to evoke the depth of human emotions. His process of distilling formal qualities to their essential, while still expounding their expressivity, served as the genesis to Color Field painting, and as a decisive through line in the transition from Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. From his first solo exhibition in 1933 through to the recent landmark retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2023, Rothko has been the subject of ever-expanding public, critical and institutional acclaim.

In the early 1960s, Rothko became a potent influence on Frankenthaler, becoming what Jackson Pollock was to her in the 1950s; his approach to shapes as hovering portals of light influenced her own sense of compositional drama. His floating, hazy colors can be felt in Frankenthaler’s aqueous canvases, as her soak-stain washes and colorful, bleeding patchworks evoke the diaphanous quality of his late-career works. Rothko and Frankenthaler crossed paths in New York’s intimate art scene in the 1960s, and one of Rothko’s paintings featured prominently above the fireplace in her home, shared with her husband and fellow painter Robert Motherwell. Rothko’s luminescent canvases revealed to Frankenthaler a more reductive abstraction. Inspired by his ability to create a sense of spatial intensity through the arrangement of color, she suffused her work with similar emotive depth, however charged with an idiosyncratic and spontaneous effervescence. While channeling Rothko to suit her artistic disposition, Frankenthaler’s oeuvre embodies an overall vividness and density of a palette very much her own.

Frankenthaler’s development of Color Field painting represents one of the largest contributions to post-war American art, a practice defined by experimentation in medium and method. Her pioneering technique of diluting paint and pouring it directly onto an unprimed canvas radically pushed the boundaries of what painting could be, embracing new materials and techniques while abandoning the emphasis on gesture championed by contemporaneous painters. Her celebrated soak-stained canvases are considered one of the key foundational elements of Color Field painting in the late 1950s and 1960s. They also positioned Frankenthaler as a pivotal figure in the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, credited with radically inspiring painters like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. Frankenthaler continued to paint prolifically into the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, expanding on her early innovations and developing more complex processes, always mining the capacity for creative expression in raw colors. Frankenthaler was the subject of numerous retrospectives in New York during her lifetime, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art; her work is included in numerous major collections worldwide.