Exhibition: From Paint to Print: Helen Frankenthaler and the Art of Collaboration

From Paint to Print: Helen Frankenthaler and the Art of Collaboration features artwork recently bequeathed to the Museum by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation; it also includes limited edition prints by artists from the Museum’s collection who worked with Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), a celebrated fine art print publisher that is recognized for fostering collaboration between artists and master printers since its founding in 1957. ULAE gained widespread recognition in the 1960s for its collaborations with artists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as a pioneer of abstract painting through her invention of the stain-soak technique thereby ushering in what is known as Color Field Painting. Despite her celebrated status as a painter, turning to printmaking in the early 1960s required a new way of thinking and working as an artist. “As the print evolves, it tells you, you tell it. You have a conversation with print,” she observed. This “conversation” included working collaboratively with master printmakers such as Tatyana Grosman and Bill Goldston at ULAE and other fine print establishments in North America and Europe to create and refine new approaches to abstraction and experimentation in print.

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.