Image: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk
Helen Frankenthaler’s ‘Milkwood Arcade’, a painting created in 1963, is currently displayed in Giacometti Hall as a new work from the collection.
Louisiana acquired ‘Milkwood Arcade’ in 2026. The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation donated the painting.
The work exemplifies Frankenthaler’s method of pouring colour directly onto the canvas and leaving it minimally worked. This approach is characteristic of her style, in which the colour is poured onto the canvas and only lightly worked. Frankenthaler’s soak-stain technique expanded the possibilities of abstract painting.
Frankenthaler helped shape American abstract art from the 1950s onward. She influenced Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, whose works are already part of Louisiana’s collection. She also often incorporated motifs from figures and landscapes in new and original ways.
Louisiana presents ‘Milkwood Arcade’ as a link between several strands of its collection, extending from Mark Rothko to Sam Gilliam and onward into contemporary art. The encounter is described as colourful.
