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One of the defining artists of American Abstract Expressionism, Frankenthaler was born in New York in 1928. Trained at Bennington College and with Wallace Harrison and Hans Hofmann, Frankenthaler is concerned with developing a close relationship between image and surface and with the specifics of the medium of paint. One of Frankenthaler's favored techniques, staining the canvas with the pigment and allowing the different layers to show through, has become a quintessential characteristic of Abstract Expressionism in general, and her work in particular.
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(price and availability subject to change as edition sells out)
CONNECTED BY JOY, 1967-70
Etching with aquatint
16.5 x 21 inches, Ed/27
$9,000.
This suite of lithographs represent two years of studio work with the Master Printers at Tyler Graphics in upstate New York. The "Reflections" are Helen Frankenthaler at her most liquid expression. The washes of brilliant color are made first on lithographic stones or plates as general ideas. The artist can vary her effect, make changes, and build an image of various layers as the plate making progresses. Once she is satisfied with the image she can vary the printer’s ink colors endlessly until the combination suits her.
Other variables include the size of margins, placement on the paper and, most especially for Frankenthaler, the color, texture, grain, and tooth of the paper. Nuances in color and delicate changes in texture have always been an important aspect of Frankenthaler’s working methods. Whether in her paintings, works on paper, or as seen in these prints, her spontaneous efforts are held in check by her rigorous demands for beauty, clarity, and an ambiguous expressive relation to the natural world.
In the twelve images of the suite, Frankenthaler has distilled the best of her stained imagery, her erratic linear elements and her mastery over some difficult color combinations. Her mark making is often random but never arbitrary. Below are the remaining available prints from this suite.
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SNOW PINES, 2004
34-color Ukiyo-e woodcut, printed with 16 woodblocks
37.5 x 26 inches
Edition of 65
$30,500 framed
GEISHA, 2003
23 color Ukiyo-e style woodcut with 15 woodblocks on Torinoko paper mounted onto Fabriano Classico paper
38 x 26 inches
$30,000
# VIII, 1995
7-color lithograph, 20 x 15 inches, Ed/30
Published by Tyler Graphics
$4,800. framed
A PAGE FROM A BOOK II, 1997
Etching with aquatint, mezzotint, pochoir
10.25 x 24.75 inches, Ed/60
$3,500.
Details below, click to enlarge:
  
WHITE PORTAL, 1967
Lithograph 30 x 22 inches, Ed/18
$8,000.
CONNECTED BY JOY, 1967-70
Etching with aquatint 16.5 x 21 inches, Ed/27
$9,000.
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Helen Frankenthaler was not heavily influenced by any one culture or heritage, despite her strong family background in Germanic and Jewish culture. Her paintings are individual in style and meaning, and she developed an unconscious attitude that culture was not foreign or exotic, but just one part of who she was.
Frankenthaler is one of the foremost practitioners of the Abstract Expressionist style of painting. Highly influenced by Jackson Pollock, she changed her entire  method of painting after watching him lay his unstretched canvases on the floor.
This revolutionary approach to painting appealed to Frankenthaler, and she has taken this process one step further.
When painting, Frankenthaler uses the canvas as a vital part of the painting, bringing it into the foreground instead of using it only as support for the paint. This process, called "staining," uses a watercolor-type paint that bleeds into a cotton-based canvas, then essentially becomes one with the canvas to create a highly unique work of art.
Unlike most artists who cover the canvas beneath their paints, Frankenthaler uses the canvas as a medium. She is known to have 'invented' a style now called color-field art by deliberately using that technique to create huge paintings. Her bright paintings are dramatic and abstract rather than realistic.
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