Yearly Archives: 2012

Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011)

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Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) was a prominent American Abstract Expressionist painter who was pivotal in the transition to Color Field painting. She is best known for pioneering the “soak-stain” technique, which she first used in her groundbreaking 1952 painting, Mountains and Sea. This method involved pouring thinned oil paint directly onto an unprimed canvas, allowing the colors to soak in and become one with the fabric, creating luminous, translucent washes. This innovative approach celebrated the spontaneous flow of color and the integrity of the canvas, profoundly influencing other artists. Over her six-decade career, Frankenthaler’s work, often inspired by nature, was exhibited internationally and is held in major museum collections around the world.

Grove

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1991

Signed, dated, and numbered 4/32 in pencil, recto

Ten-color woodcut from 4 blocks (3 of Pacific Basin mahogany and 1 of Douglas fir) on off-white Awagami-Fujimori handmade paper

25 x 38 inches

Printed by Emanuele Cacciatore, Benjamin Gervis, and Garner Tullis
Published by Garner Tullis, New York City

Contact gallery for price.

“Unabashedly expressionistic, [the] aim [of ‘Grove’] does not appear painterly, but graphic. Its effect depends on the wood’s rawness and the grain’s dominance. In earlier woodcutsFrankenthaler found ways to transpose a painterly vision into print. Treating wood like canvas and ink like paint, she bent the medium to fit her aesthetic. But in ‘Grove,’ she moves in another direction. The electric gouge gave her an autonomy and freedom of gesture that the composition reflects. Energetic and rife with feeling, ‘Grove’ is reminiscent of the woodcuts of Edvard Munch—not a look she aspired to.  It has a realistic aspect, similar to Frankenthaler’s nature-inspired abstractions of the 1950s and 1960s.”

—Judith Goldman, Frankenthaler: The Woodcuts (New York City: George Braziller, Inc., Publishers, 2002), p. 62-9, full-page color illus.