Helen Frankenthaler
Mary, Mary
1987

Name: Mary, Mary
Brand: Helen Frankenthaler
Price: 38319.17 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Screenprint and offset lithograph in colours, 1987, on wove paper, signed in pencil by the artist, one of 10 printer's proofs, aside from standard edition of 72, published by Lincoln Center, New York, 106.6 x 81.2 cm. Perhaps one of the most influential female Abstract Expressionists, Helen Frankenthaler made the colour staining process one of her signature techniques over the course of her career. Whereas other Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko would use a primed canvas and drip paint onto this, Frankenthaler would instead lather the un-primed canvas with paint and allow it to soak in before proceeding to create the piece. This became known as the Colour Fielding or ‘Soak and Stain’ technique and inspired a future of generation of artists to experiment with pre-treatment of canvases. ‘Mary, Mary’, a combination of screenprint and offset lithograph, is an excellent example of the colour fielding process and the results it can have. Her stained canvas and typical fluid-like composition, highlights her bohemian role in the Abstract Expressionist movement. She developed signature techniques to break the mould of how the canvas can be approached; instead of painting onto the canvas, the canvas becomes the painting.

Creator:

Helen Frankenthaler (1928, American)

Creation Year:

1987

Dimensions:

Height: 41.97 in (106.6 cm)Width: 31.97 in (81.2 cm)

Medium:

Offset,Screen

Movement & Style:

Abstract

Period:

Late 20th Century

Condition:

Gallery Location:

London, GB

Reference Number:

Seller: 1089871stDibs: LU47011033202

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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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