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Extended through March 26, 2022

Helen Frankenthaler

Selected Works

January 18–March 26, 2022
rue de Castiglione, Paris

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Installation video

Installation view Artwork © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Installation view

Artwork © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Installation view Artwork © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Installation view

Artwork © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Installation view Artwork © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Installation view

Artwork © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Installation view Artwork © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Installation view

Artwork © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Works Exhibited

Helen Frankenthaler, Ocean Drive West #1, 1974 Acrylic on canvas, 94 × 144 inches (238.8 × 365.8 cm)© 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Ocean Drive West #1, 1974

Acrylic on canvas, 94 × 144 inches (238.8 × 365.8 cm)
© 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Square Figure, 1961 Oil on sized, primed canvas, 97 ⅝ × 86 ½ inches (248 × 219.7 cm)© 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Robert McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Square Figure, 1961

Oil on sized, primed canvas, 97 ⅝ × 86 ½ inches (248 × 219.7 cm)
© 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Robert McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled, 1997 Acrylic on paper, 36 × 30 ⅜ inches (91.4 × 77.2 cm)© 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled, 1997

Acrylic on paper, 36 × 30 ⅜ inches (91.4 × 77.2 cm)
© 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled, 1996 Acrylic on paper, 22 ⅜ × 30 inches (56.8 × 76.2 cm)© 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled, 1996

Acrylic on paper, 22 ⅜ × 30 inches (56.8 × 76.2 cm)
© 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled, 1993 Acrylic on paper, 30 ¼ × 21 ¾ inches (76.8 × 55.2 cm)© 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled, 1993

Acrylic on paper, 30 ¼ × 21 ¾ inches (76.8 × 55.2 cm)
© 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

About

The first solo presentation of Helen Frankenthaler’s works to be held in Paris since After Abstract Expressionism, 1959–1962 at Gagosian in 2017, this grouping spans three decades of her painting practice. Two canvases from 1961, Black Shapes on Black and Square Figure, emerged from a pivotal moment in Frankenthaler’s career, a year after her first institutional retrospective at the Jewish Museum, New York. They are composed with highly saturated colors imparted by her use of thinned oil paint, together with more graphic linear elements that define an aggregation of autonomous shapes. Painted a decade later, soon after Frankenthaler began spending summers at Shippan Point in Stamford, Connecticut, facing Long Island Sound, Ocean Drive West #1 (1974) conveys both the tranquility and restless movement of the ocean through its lucid blue tones and supple swelling forms. A group of brilliantly hued gestural works on paper from the 1990s exemplifies Frankenthaler’s lifelong exploration of the technical and compositional possibilities of painting.

Carol Armstrong and John Elderfield seated in front of a painting by Helen Frankenthaler

In Conversation
Carol Armstrong and John Elderfield

In conjunction with the exhibition Drawing within Nature: Paintings from the 1990s at Gagosian in New York, Carol Armstrong and John Elderfield discuss Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings and large-scale works on paper dating from 1990 to 1995.

Helen Frankenthaler, Madame Butterfly, 102 color woodcut from 46 woodblocks

The Romance of a New Medium: Helen Frankenthaler and the Art of Collaboration

Inspired by the recent retrospective of Helen Frankenthaler’s woodcuts at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, William Davie writes about the artist’s innovative journey with printmaking. Davie illuminates Frankenthaler’s formative collaborations with master printers Tatyana Grosman and Kenneth Tyler.

Katy Hessel, Matthew Holman, and Eleanor Nairne

In Conversation
Katy Hessel, Matthew Holman, and Eleanor Nairne on Helen Frankenthaler

Broadcaster and art historian Katy Hessel; Matthew Holman, associate lecturer in English at University College London; and Eleanor Nairne, curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, discuss Helen Frankenthaler’s early training, the development of her signature soak-stain technique and subsequent shifts in style, and her connections to the London art world.

Helen Frankenthaler, Heart of London Map, steel sculpture

Helen Frankenthaler: A Painter’s Sculptures

On the occasion of four exhibitions in London exploring different aspects of Helen Frankenthaler’s work, Lauren Mahony introduces texts by the sculptor Anthony Caro and by the artist herself on her relatively unfamiliar first body of sculpture, made in the summer of 1972 in Caro’s London studio.

Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006), on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2021

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2021

The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.

Augurs of Spring

Augurs of Spring

As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney Stutterheim reflects on the iconography and symbolism of the season in art both past and present.