Correspondence from Helen Frankenthaler is arranged chronologically, with related materials at the end.

This series includes five decades of frequent and lengthy correspondence between second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) and Sonya Rudikoff. Letters are primarily from Frankenthaler to Rudikoff, numbering around 234 letters and 314 postcards from 1950 to 1997, including several letters addressed to Robert Gutman and the Gutman family after Rudikoff's death. Also present are a few letters addressed to Rudikoff from Frankenthaler's husband, the prominent first-generation Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) and his daughters. Motherwell also often signed and wrote postscripts to some of Frankenthaler's postcards throughout the 1960s.

Rudikoff met Frankenthaler, a painter who became widely known for her innovative techniques, including color field painting, post-painterly abstraction, and soak stain, while both women were attending Bennington College in Vermont in the late 1940s. At Bennington, both studied painting with artist Paul Feeley and developed an intimate friendship based on common interests in art and art history. Following their graduation from Bennington, Frankenthaler and Rudikoff shared a New York City studio apartment together in 1950, where Frankenthaler introduced Rudikoff to Robert Gutman, whom she would later marry. During the early 1950s, Frankenthaler carried on a five-year relationship with influential art critic Clement Greenberg, who introduced her to many major figures in the art world and encouraged her to join the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, where she held her first solo show in 1951. In 1952, at age 24, she painted and exhibited Mountains and Sea, which launched her early career. After Rudikoff moved to the Northeast, Frankenthaler sent detailed correspondence about her early paintings and gallery shows, as well as her descriptions of the vibrant New York art scene in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout their correspondence, but particularly in her letters from the 1950s, Frankenthaler shares, at length, her comments on the direction of contemporary and historical art movements, as well as her opinions of paintings at the many international art shows and galleries she visited. Her letters often contain detailed descriptions of her own work processes and studio spaces, the development of her aesthetic and the evolution of her work over time, her reasons for selecting paintings for various exhibitions, and her reactions to reviews and publicity surrounding her work. They also provide a timeline of her various productive periods and creative lulls, as well as her personal relationships. A small amount of exhibition catalogs and invitations to openings are also present for many of Frankenthaler's art shows.

Frankenthaler married Robert Motherwell in 1958. Afterwards, the couple traveled widely together and resided between New York City, Connecticut, and Cape Cod, where they worked in different studios, often throwing extravagant parties for many well-known artists, critics, and writers. Frankenthaler's letters from this period often describe her impressions of friends, acquaintances, and party guests, including Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann, David Smith, Shirley Jackson, Jean Dubuffet, Kenneth Burke, Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Peggy Guggenheim, Ralph Ellison, Stanley Kunitz, and Lionel Trilling. In addition to describing her own paintings, Frankenthaler's letters also often include her thoughts on her friends' artwork, including that of her husband, Robert Motherwell, as well as her fluctuating relationship with the New York art scene. Throughout her life, Frankenthaler also wrote regarding her political views, thoughts on aging, international travels, health issues, psychoanalysis, and personal relationships, including her 1994 marriage to investment banker Stephen DuBrul. While Frankenthaler's letters in the 1980s and 1990s are increasingly personal in nature, they still often contain reflections on her career in earlier years, as well as document her later artwork, exhibitions, lectures, and professional service.

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This series is arranged into three file groups, based on original order.

This series includes Rudikoff's personal and professional correspondence from 1949 through 1997, along with some related correspondence of her husband, Robert Gutman, following her death in 1997. The original groups into which correspondence was filed were preserved and are reflected in the three file groups within this series, which include two distinct alphabetical runs of correspondence, divided by function into editorial and personal correspondence, along with a group of Robert Gutman's correspondence, both with Rudikoff throughout their courtship and marriage, as well as his correspondence regarding Rudikoff and her work, after her death.

Editorial correspondence regards Rudikoff's work as a writer, literary critic, editor, and committee member for various literary awards. A significant group of correspondence between Rudikoff and editors at The Hudson Review, including Paula Deitz, is present, along with correspondence with editors at The American Scholar, Daedalus, The New Yorker, The New Criterion, The New York Times, and other periodicals. Correspondence is also present regarding Rudikoff's roll in selecting candidates for the National Book Award and the Bennett Award, as well as a small amount of correspondence with writers Irving Howe, Nadine Gordimer, and Stanley Kunitz, and with relatives of Virginia Woolf, including Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett. Personal correspondence primarily includes letters from various family friends, along with a small group of letters from Rudikoff to her parents, accounting her travels in London in 1952. Robert Gutman's correspondence includes love letters between Rudikoff and her husband, Gutman's correspondence with various parties regarding the posthumous publication of Rudikoff's book, Ancestral Houses: Virginia Woolf and the Aristocracy, and condolence letters sent to Gutman following Rudikoff's death in 1997.

Rudikoff's extensive correspondence with Helen Frankenthaler was filed separately and can be found in Series 1.

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Materials within this series are not arranged according to any arrangement scheme.

This series primarily contains Rudikoff's notebooks, papers, diaries, planners, assessments, clippings, and coursework from her time at Bennington College from 1945 until her graduation in 1948. Composition notebooks contain extensive notes on her Bennington classes in literature, creative writing, art, logic, Greek, and psychology, the margins of which are usually lushly decorated with small sketches and doodles. Intimate diaries describe Rudikoff's experience as a young female college student in the late 1940s. Rudikoff's academic writings demonstrate an early interest in modernist women writers and include several drafts of her senior project, titled "Gertrude Stein's Blue Guitar: Studies in Language, Form, Motif."

Some notes and transcripts from Rudikoff's continuing studies at Columbia University in the early 1950s are also present, along with later writings and correspondence regarding her time at Bennington College and her continued involvement as an alumna.

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Materials within this series are not arranged according to any arrangement scheme.

This series contains writings and papers of Sonya Rudikoff, primarily unpublished works, including lectures and academic papers, often about Virginia Woolf, that Rudikoff presented at various conferences on Victorian literature, as well as typescripts of short stories and other fictional works. Of note is a typescript for a novel that portrays the life of a female Abstract Expressionist painter living in New York City in the late 1940s and early 1950s, possibly inspired by Rudikoff's roommate, Helen Frankenthaler. Although the typescript for the novel is untitled, an attached synopsis lists "Abstract Expressionism" and "Sybil, What Do You Want?" as possible titles. A curriculum vitae and bibliography of Rudikoff's published works is also included, documenting her frequent publications from the 1950s through the 1990s, which consist of literary reviews and essays appearing in major journals, including regular articles in The Hudson Review.

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