Helen Frankenthaler
"Parets" original colograph by Helen Frankenthaler
1988

Name: "Parets" original colograph by Helen Frankenthaler
Brand: Helen Frankenthaler
Price: 29500 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) "Parets" Collagraph drawn with Araldite glue, c. 1988 Printed in light burnt sienna from one steel plate, off white handmade paper Signed in lower margin on rives paper This impression 6 from the edition of 20 signed and numbered by artist Sheet Size: 50 ¾” x 34 ¾” Published by Ediciones Poligrafa, S.A., Parets del Valles In 1987 Frankenthaler accepted an invitation to come to Barcelona and work with mast printer Joan de Muga at Ediciones Poligrafa. During a 10-day period Frankenthaler began four mixed media works combining lithography (4 aluminum plates) etching and drypoint (one copper plate). Joan de Muga made six visits to Frankenthaler’s studios in New York and Connecticut in the following months bringing proofs; Frankenthaler made corrections and gave precise instructions on the way she wanted them printed. The edition was printed after she was finally satisfied with all of her changes. The result is a large, rich, complex beautiful collaboration. The signed impressions were sold by Galeria Joan Prats; the artist’s proofs were kept by Frankenthaler. Helen Frankenthaler, a widely acclaimed member of the New York School, and leading figure of second-generation abstract expressionists, is a prominent American artist. Born in New York in 1928, Frankenthaler attended the Dalton School, where she studied with the Mexican painter Tamayo. After attending Bennington College in Vermont, she returned to New York to establish herself among the New York avant-garde. In 1950, she met the formalist art critic Clement Greenberg, who proved instrumental in acquainting Frankenthaler with leading figures in the New York art scene such Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Like them, she was interested in transforming elements of nature into abstract expressionism to develop a new technique: pouring thinned pigment onto unprimed canvas. This way of painting, asserting the primacy of color through fusing color and ground, led to a new style in art: color field painting. For a number of her contemporaries, soak-staining replaced the thickly painted, gestural strokes of action painting. This pouring technique created abstract fields, or shapes, of color, simplifications of scenes in nature, and achieved a dynamic lyricism that claims the picture space. Frankenthaler’s stained paintings, based on real or imaginary landscapes, epitomize her art. In 1958, Frankenthaler married painter, Robert Motherwell, from whom she was later divorced. Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s she continued to explore the use of large abstract forms and rich color in canvases; but in this later work, Frankenthaler began to “flood” her canvases with color rather than staining them, a result of the artist’s switch from oil to acrylic paint. In addition to teaching in New York, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities, Frankenthaler has had numerous one-person exhibitions, including retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1969 and the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1989.

Creator:

Helen Frankenthaler (1928, American)

Creation Year:

1988

Dimensions:

Height: 58.5 in (148.59 cm)Width: 45 in (114.3 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)

More Editions & Sizes:

Impression 6 of 20Price: $29,500

Medium:

Mixed Media

Movement & Style:

Abstract Expressionist

Period:

1980-1989

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Hinsdale, IL

Reference Number:

Seller: 21981stDibs: LU138426985952

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Helen Frankenthaler

Prolific and pioneering painter Helen Frankenthaler said it was “a combination of impatience, laziness and innovation” that drove her to thin her paints with turpentine so that they would seep into the fabric of an unprimed canvas. Her breakthrough in the early 1950s led the way for a spellbinding new style of painting that would come to be known as Color Field.

Although Color Field is often considered a strain of Abstract Expressionism, Frankenthaler’s work differed from the gestural “Action Painting” that typified the paintings of artists like Willem de Kooning and Lee Krasner. Her vast and immersive expanses of color created at a fearless scale captivated art critics and greatly influenced her peers including Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.

Frankenthaler knew from an early age that she wanted to be a painter. The youngest daughter of a New York State Supreme Court justice, she grew up on Manhattan’s Park Avenue and as a child delighted in the little ways color and form revealed themselves, whether dribbling red nail polish in a sink full of water or drawing her steps from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to her family’s apartment. As a student at Bennington College, her rare vision was enriched by the mentorship of painter Paul Feeley, who gave her lessons in Cubism. After dabbling in art history at Columbia University, she rented a studio downtown and befriended rising New York art stars like Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell, whom she later married.

Characterized by “direct, exuberant gestures,” the Abstract Expressionist technique was all about gusto, and Frankenthaler had it in spades. One of the few women of this era to garner widespread critical acclaim, Frankenthaler had a significant impact on the mid-20th-century art world. She exhibited in the high-profile 1951 Ninth Street Show and, in 1957, she appeared in a Life magazine spread on women artists photographed by Gordon Parks. In 1960, the Jewish Museum held her first major museum show, a retrospective of her 1950s work. A 1969 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art further introduced Frankenthaler to the broader art world.

While Frankenthaler remains best known for bold, expressive “soak-stain” paintings such as Mountains and Sea (1952), she worked across diverse media for decades, with forays into woodcutting, drawing and printmaking that also pushed boundaries. She also taught at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, fostering generations of artists. She died in 2011.

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