• Artist: Helen Frankenthaler
• Material: Oil and charcoal on canvas
• Measurement: 86 3/8 x 117 1/4 in
• Classification: Painting

Helen Frankenthaler first demonstrated an innovative soak-staining technique in Mountains and Sea, revolutionizing the potential for abstraction. She poured thinly reduced oil paint directly onto non-stretched canvas, allowing color to seep in, creating soft, transparent veils suggesting natural forms without representing them. The painting, completed when Frankenthaler was 23, captures spontaneity as much as control, walking the line between landscape and lyrical abstraction. Her method paved the way for Color Field painting and inspired Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. When women painters tended to be ignored or disparaged, Frankenthaler claimed an original voice prioritizing fluidity, emotion, and color over muscular drawing. Mountains and Sea is an elegantly subversive work that helped propel Abstract Expressionism in fresh, expansive ways, combatting the supremacy of its larger, male-coded gesture.