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Extended through April 22, 2023

Helen Frankenthaler

Drawing within Nature: Paintings from the 1990s

March 9–April 22, 2023
541 West 24th Street, New York

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Installation video

Installation view Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Works Exhibited

Helen Frankenthaler, Stella Polaris, 1990 Acrylic on canvas, 96 × 108 inches (243.8 × 274.3 cm)© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Stella Polaris, 1990

Acrylic on canvas, 96 × 108 inches (243.8 × 274.3 cm)
© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Western Roadmap, 1991 Acrylic on canvas, 58 × 104 inches (147.3 × 264.2 cm)© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Western Roadmap, 1991

Acrylic on canvas, 58 × 104 inches (147.3 × 264.2 cm)
© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Sister Sky, 1991 Acrylic on canvas, 60 × 81 inches (152.4 × 205.7 cm)© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Sister Sky, 1991

Acrylic on canvas, 60 × 81 inches (152.4 × 205.7 cm)
© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Reef, 1991 Acrylic on canvas, 44 ¾ × 82 ¾ inches (113.7 × 210.2 cm)© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Reef, 1991

Acrylic on canvas, 44 ¾ × 82 ¾ inches (113.7 × 210.2 cm)
© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Spellbound, 1991 Acrylic on canvas, 59 × 81 inches (149.9 × 205.7 cm)© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Spellbound, 1991

Acrylic on canvas, 59 × 81 inches (149.9 × 205.7 cm)
© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, The Rake’s Progress, 1991 Acrylic on canvas, 94 ½ × 68 ½ inches (240 × 174 cm)© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, The Rake’s Progress, 1991

Acrylic on canvas, 94 ½ × 68 ½ inches (240 × 174 cm)
© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Magnet, 1992 Acrylic on canvas, 106 × 81 ¾ inches (269.2 × 207.6 cm)© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Magnet, 1992

Acrylic on canvas, 106 × 81 ¾ inches (269.2 × 207.6 cm)
© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Vespers, 1992 Acrylic on canvas, 48 × 63 ¾ inches (121.9 × 161.9 cm)© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Helen Frankenthaler, Vespers, 1992

Acrylic on canvas, 48 × 63 ¾ inches (121.9 × 161.9 cm)
© 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

About

My pictures are full of climates, abstract climates, and not nature per se. But a feeling. And the feeling of an order that is associated more with nature. Nature in seasons, maybe; but nature in, well, an order. And I think art itself is order out of chaos.
—Helen Frankenthaler

Gagosian is pleased to announce Drawing within Nature: Paintings from the 1990s, an exhibition of twelve paintings and two large-scale works on paper by Helen Frankenthaler. This will be the first time in almost two decades that a group of the artist’s paintings from this era have been presented in New York, with some that have never previously been exhibited.

Frankenthaler’s celebrated 1952 composition, Mountains and Sea, was the first of her soak-stained canvases and was highly influential in the development of 1960s Color Field painting. By the 1970s, though, she had amplified her methods to include the expressive possibilities of surface inflection and density. Over the course of the 1980s, highly painterly canvases became her principal pictorial means, soon resulting in, during what would be her final decade, canvases of the greatest dramatic impact of her entire career, some of an unexpectedly large size.

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Press

Gagosian
press@gagosian.com

Hallie Freer
hfreer@gagosian.com
+1 212 744 2313

Polskin Arts
Meagan Jones
meagan.jones@finnpartners.com
+1 212 593 6485

Julia Esposito
julia.esposito@finnpartners.com
+1 212 715 1643

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.