What Are Helen Frankenthaler’s Most Expensive Paintings? Here Are the Top 5

Helen Frankenthaler is one of the most legendary female painters ever to emerge from New York. The born-and-raised Upper East Sider was inspired by the action painter Jackson Pollock, but she famously devised an artistic revelation of her own, in 1952—the soak-stain painting technique, paving the way for Color Field painters like Mark Rothko.

The Gagosian Gallery helped elevated Frankenthaler to a true headlining name upon taking on her estate in 2012, the year after she died. As it stands, her five most expensive works all sold at auction within the past five years. They also all hail from the 1970s, a pivotal period during which Frankenthaler eschewed negative space for rich, layered color. On the occasion of her current exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, let’s dive into these beauties.

2. Dream Decision (1976)

Estimate: $2 million to $3 million
Final Price: $5.89 million
Where & When: Sotheby’s New York, November 19, 2021

Although it’s easy to see things in Frankenthaler’s work, that was never the point. Like any abstract artist worth their salt, she sought to capture the emotional, subconscious impressions underlying our material world. Dream Decision, drenched in a lilac haze, embodies this aim with an air of feminine mystique.

This arrangement proved so mesmerizing, in fact, that, before this fateful Contemporary Day Auction at Sotheby’s four years ago, Dream Decision had never hit the market in any capacity. A collector bought the work from San Francisco’s John Berggruen Gallery the year it was made, and then someone else acquired it in 2004. Like the other four works on this list, the buyer remains anonymous. No one knows whether this work will ever enthrall the public again.