Gagosian Gallery’s latest announcement that it both represents the Helen Frankenthaler Estate and will mount an important exhibition of her paintings from the 1950s reminds us all of the value the gallery gets from working with John Elderfield:

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce the representation of the Estate of Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011); and a forthcoming, spring 2013, memorial exhibition of her paintings from the 1950s at the West 21st Street gallery in New York.

Frankenthaler’s first retrospective was at the Jewish Museum, New York in 1960. Subsequent surveys included the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1969; and international tour) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (1989; and tour). In addition to the many essays and articles on her work, she was the subject of three monographs: Frankenthaler by Barbara Rose (1972);Frankenthaler by John Elderfield (1989-90); and Frankenthaler: A Catalogue Raisonné of Prints 1961­-1994 by Suzanne Boorsch and Pegram Harrison (1996).

Her work is represented in the permanent collections of many institutions worldwide, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The forthcoming, spring 2013, memorial exhibition of Frankenthaler’s paintings of the 1950s at the West 21st Street gallery in New York will be curated by John Elderfield, author of the 1989 monograph on her work and a Consultant at Gagosian Gallery. It will be accompanied by a major, fully documented and illustrated catalogue.