Helen Frankenthaler

This extraordinary examination of the work of ''colour field'' painter Helen Frankenthaler overturns assumptions about the artist, whose work has been burdened by its label as ''the bridge between Pollock and what was possible''. Trained as a painter, Alison Rowley brings a keen eye to Frankenthaler''s paintings, returning to the fore the artist''s debt not only to Jackson Pollock but also to Cezanne, and speculating for the first time as to her artistic responses to wider political events, in particular the Rosenberg trial. Making a fascinating case, too, for the connections between the ''breakthrough'' work ''Mountains and Sea'' and Lily Briscoe''s painting in Virginia Woolf''s novel ''To the Lighthouse'', this beautifully written book provides crucial new insights into Frankenthaler''s practice, as a painter who is also a woman.