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What technique did Helen Frankenthaler use?
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Helen Frankenthaler is an American abstract expressionist painter that was known for inventing a technique referred to as soak-stain. Soak staining is a process using thinned paint and raw canvas, similar to painting fabric. Shop a range of Helen Frankenthaler work on 1stDibs.
1stDibs ExpertApril 5, 2022
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Helen Frankenthaler offset lithograph HAND SIGNED dated, warmly inscribed Framed
By Helen Frankenthaler
Located in New York, NY
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler at Andre Emmericah (hand signed, dated and warmly inscribed), 1968
Silkscreen and offset lithograph on wove paper
Signed, dated 1972 and warml...
Category
1960s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
Materials
Lithograph, Offset, Screen
Variation II on Mauve Corner (Harrison, 17), Color Lithograph, Signed/N, Framed
By Helen Frankenthaler
Located in New York, NY
Helen Frankenthaler
Variation II on Mauve Corner (Harrison, 17), 1969
Lithograph in colors on Chatham British paper
Signed, dated and numbered 14/21 in graphite pencil on the front Published by ULAE, West Islip, NY, with their blind stamp
Frame included
Accompanied by gallery issued Certificate of Guarantee
Lithograph in colors on Chatham British paper
Signed, dated and numbered 14/21 in graphite pencil on the front
Published and printed by ULAE, West Islip, NY, with their blind stamp
Literature: Frankenthaler, A Catalogue Raisonné: Prints 1961-1994, Harrison, no. 17, ppg. 106-109
Accompanied by gallery issued Certificate of Guarantee
Elegantly floated and framed in a museum quality wood frame under UV plexiglass
Measurements:
Framed:
23.75 (vertical) x 28.75 (horizontal) x 2 inches
Artwork:
20 inches (vertical) x 25 inches (horizontal)
“What concerns me when I work is not whether a picture is a landscape… or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is, did I make a beautiful picture?” - - Helen Frankenthaler
This is Frankenthaler's first silkscreen, produced for the portfolio New York Ten, which includes works by other New York-based artists at the time such as Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Tom Wesselmann and Claes Oldenburg. (She created her first lithograph in 1961)
Other examples of this edition are found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, MOCA Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum, the Philadelphia Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and numerous regional museums and institutions in the United States and worldwide.
Helen Frankenthaler, A Brief Biography
Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. She produced a body of work whose impact on contemporary art has been profound and continues to grow.
Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928, and raised in New York City. She attended the Dalton School, where she received her earliest art instruction from Rufino Tamayo. In 1949 she graduated from Bennington College, Vermont, where she was a student of Paul Feeley. She later studied briefly with Hans Hofmann.
Frankenthaler’s professional exhibition career began in 1950, when Adolph Gottlieb selected her painting Beach (1950) for inclusion in the exhibition titled Fifteen Unknowns: Selected by Artists of the Kootz Gallery. Her first solo exhibition was presented in 1951, at New York’s Tibor de Nagy Gallery, and that year she was also included in the landmark exhibition 9th St. Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture.
In 1952 Frankenthaler created Mountains and Sea, a breakthrough painting of American abstraction for which she poured thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas laid on the studio floor, working from all sides to create floating fields of translucent color. Mountains and Sea was immediately influential for the artists who formed the Color Field school of painting, notable among them Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.
As early as 1959, Frankenthaler began to be a regular presence in major international exhibitions. She won first prize at the Premiere Biennale de Paris that year, and in 1966 she represented the United States in the 33rd Venice Biennale, alongside Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jules Olitski. She had her first major museum exhibition in 1960, at New York’s Jewish Museum, and her second, in 1969, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, followed by an international tour.
Frankenthaler experimented tirelessly throughout her long career. In addition to producing unique paintings on canvas and paper, she worked in a wide range of media, including ceramics, sculpture, tapestry, and especially printmaking. Hers was a significant voice in the mid-century “print renaissance” among American abstract painters, and she is particularly renowned for her woodcuts. She continued working productively through the opening years of this century.
Frankenthaler’s distinguished, prolific career has been the subject of numerous monographic museum exhibitions. The Jewish Museum and Whitney Museum shows were succeeded by a major retrospective initiated by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth that traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI (1989); and those devoted to works on paper and prints organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1993), among others.
Select recent important exhibitions have included Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959 (Gagosian, NY, 2013); Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and JMW Turner (Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK, 2014); Giving Up One’s Mark: Helen Frankenthaler in the 1960s and 1970s (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2014–15); Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler (Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 2015); As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler, Paintings and No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts...
Category
1960s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
Materials
Lithograph
The Darker Palette print, Hand signed twice and inscribed by Helen Frankenthaler
By Helen Frankenthaler
Located in New York, NY
Helen Frankenthaler
Frankenthaler: The Darker Palette (Hand signed twice and inscribed), 1998
Offset Lithograph print
42 × 35 in
hand signed "Frankenthaler" lower left; inscribed and...
Category
1990s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
Materials
Offset, Permanent Marker, Lithograph
Altitudes /// Abstract Expressionism Helen Frankenthaler Female Post-War Modern
By Helen Frankenthaler
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
Artist: Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928-2011)
Title: "Altitudes"
*Signed, dated, and numbered by Frankenthaler in pencil lower right
Year: 1978
Medium: Original Lithograph on light yellow-pink J.B. Green Hayle Mill Bodleian handmade paper
Limited edition: 29/42
Printer: Bill Goldston and John A. Lund of Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, NY
Publisher: Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, NY
Reference: "Frankenthaler: A Catalogue Raisonné - Prints 1961-1994" - Harrison No. 72, page 264, 268-270; "ULAE" - Sparks No. 33, page 88, 323; Clark No. 67; Williams No. 67
Sheet size (irregular margins): 22.25" x 30.88"
Condition: Remnants of previous mounting tape on verso. In excellent condition with strong colors
Very rare
Notes:
Provenance: private collection - New York, NY; private collection - notable fashion illustrator Jay Hyde, Crawford, New York, NY; acquired from an art gallery in New York, NY; likely acquired directly from the publisher Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, NY. Lithograph drawn with tusche wash. Printed in two colors from two stones: red and green. Universal Limited Art Editions chop mark/blind stamp lower right.
"Frankenthaler: A Catalogue Raisonné - Prints 1961-1994" - Harrison - "Frankenthaler carefully chose a European handmade paper that would add another color and texture to the print" ... "By contrast, in "Altitudes", the artist created a bleed image so that the sheet of paper is smaller than the stone's image and the large red tusche wash sweeps across the surface of the yellow-pink J.B. Green Hayle Mill Bodleian paper, becoming warmed and enhanced by its color and texture."
"Universal Limited Art Editions - A History and Catalogue: The First Twenty-Five Years" - Sparks - "In "Bronze Smoke" (cat. no. 32), "Altitudes" (cat. no. 33), and "Door" (cat. no. 34), minimal compositions were replaced by fields of drifting, multilayered color, as rich and satisfying as her work on a much grander scale."
Biography:
Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting...
Category
1970s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
Materials
Handmade Paper, Lithograph
A Paintings Retrospective: vintage LACMA Museum poster depicting her 1963 work
By Helen Frankenthaler
Located in New York, NY
Helen Frankenthaler
A Paintings Retrospective: vintage LACMA Museum poster, 1990
Offset lithograph museum poster
(Unsigned & Unnumbered)
Limited Edition - though exact number produced unknown
37 × 25 inches
Unframed
This was printed in the artists lifetime - making it more collectible - on the occasion of the exhibition, "Helen Frankenthaler: A Paintings Retrospective from February to April, 1990 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Print is published by Editions Limited Galleries, San Francisco for Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), LA, CA
The work depicted is Helen Frankenthaler, The Bay, 1963, acrylic on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan (Incidentally, this beautiful work is featured on the cover of the book Water and Art' by David Clarke.)
Accompanied by gallery issued Certificate of Guarantee
“What concerns me when I work is not whether a picture is a landscape… or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is, did I make a beautiful picture?” - - Helen Frankenthaler
This is Frankenthaler's first silkscreen, produced for the portfolio New York Ten, which includes works by other New York-based artists at the time such as Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Tom Wesselmann and Claes Oldenburg. (She created her first lithograph in 1961)
Other examples of this edition are found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, MOCA Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum, the Philadelphia Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and numerous regional museums and institutions in the United States and worldwide.
Helen Frankenthaler, A Brief Biography
Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. She produced a body of work whose impact on contemporary art has been profound and continues to grow.
Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928, and raised in New York City. She attended the Dalton School, where she received her earliest art instruction from Rufino Tamayo. In 1949 she graduated from Bennington College, Vermont, where she was a student of Paul Feeley. She later studied briefly with Hans Hofmann.
Frankenthaler’s professional exhibition career began in 1950, when Adolph Gottlieb selected her painting Beach (1950) for inclusion in the exhibition titled Fifteen Unknowns: Selected by Artists of the Kootz Gallery. Her first solo exhibition was presented in 1951, at New York’s Tibor de Nagy Gallery, and that year she was also included in the landmark exhibition 9th St. Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture.
In 1952 Frankenthaler created Mountains and Sea, a breakthrough painting of American abstraction for which she poured thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas laid on the studio floor, working from all sides to create floating fields of translucent color. Mountains and Sea was immediately influential for the artists who formed the Color Field school of painting, notable among them Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.
As early as 1959, Frankenthaler began to be a regular presence in major international exhibitions. She won first prize at the Premiere Biennale de Paris that year, and in 1966 she represented the United States in the 33rd Venice Biennale, alongside Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jules Olitski. She had her first major museum exhibition in 1960, at New York’s Jewish Museum, and her second, in 1969, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, followed by an international tour.
Frankenthaler experimented tirelessly throughout her long career. In addition to producing unique paintings on canvas and paper, she worked in a wide range of media, including ceramics, sculpture, tapestry, and especially printmaking. Hers was a significant voice in the mid-century “print renaissance” among American abstract painters, and she is particularly renowned for her woodcuts. She continued working productively through the opening years of this century.
Frankenthaler’s distinguished, prolific career has been the subject of numerous monographic museum exhibitions. The Jewish Museum and Whitney Museum shows were succeeded by a major retrospective initiated by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth that traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI (1989); and those devoted to works on paper and prints organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1993), among others.
Select recent important exhibitions have included Painted on 21st Street: Helen Frankenthaler from 1950 to 1959 (Gagosian, NY, 2013); Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and JMW Turner (Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK, 2014); Giving Up One’s Mark: Helen Frankenthaler in the 1960s and 1970s (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2014–15); Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler (Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 2015); As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler, Paintings and No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts...
Category
1990s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
Materials
Lithograph, Offset
Eve
By Helen Frankenthaler
Located in Vancouver, CA
Discover "EVE," a vivid and expressive screenprint by Helen Frankenthaler, exemplifying her abstract expressionist style. Created in 1995, this artist's proof (9/16) is beautifully r...
Category
1990s Abstract Abstract Prints
Materials
Handmade Paper, Screen
$24,700 Sale Price
35% Off