Frankenthaler at Eighty: Six Decades

Helen Frankenthaler, eminent among American abstract painters, will be eighty in December 2008. To celebrate her landmark birthday, Knoedler & Company is pleased to present this survey exhibition of major paintings spanning Frankenthaler's entire career, from the 1950s to the 2000s. The show can be described as by, with, and from Frankenthaler. The selection has been made by the exhibition's curator, Karen Wilkin, in consultation with the artist, from paintings that, until now, she has retained as part of her personal collection of her own work. Together, this retrospective in miniature documents the evolution of Frankenthaler's distinctive approach and affirms her gifts as a colorist. The nine important works on view range from early stain paintings that first established her reputation to more recent, more densely painted expanses of radiant hues, from brilliant orchestrations of multiple colors to glowing monochromes.

Frankenthaler's place in the pantheon of postwar American artists is assured by the powerful body of work she has produced since 1951, when the presence of a blazing young talent was announced by her first solo show, at Tibor de Nagy Gallery. Her luminous distillations of experience into a language of chroma and touch helped point the way toward a new kind of American abstraction based on the eloquence of color relationships—now described as “Color Field Painting.” The originality of Frankenthaler's early works and their effect on her colleagues and contemporaries, such as Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, is a well-documented, frequently discussed aspect of the history of 20th century American art.

The nine paintings on view cumulatively present a vivid portrait of the artist's career, yet at the same time, the selection, like any Frankenthaler exhibition restricted to paintings, fails to do justice to her wide-ranging practice. In addition to works on canvas, she has made sculptures in steel, explored the possibilities of ceramic, and devised massive bronze “screens” that incorporate print images and polychrome patination. She has created backdrops and costumes for a ballet. She is a virtuoso printmaker who has explored virtually every technique, from lithography to etching to traditional traditional Japanese woodblock. And she has worked on paper with the same seriousness that she brings to her large-scale paintings, producing an impressive body of ambitious watercolors, gouaches, and mixed media works.

This thirst for fresh approaches has been a constant throughout Frankenthaler's long career. Ms. Wilkin, who has organized several museum exhibitions of Frankenthaler's work, writes in her catalogue essay, We categorize Frankenthaler at our peril. Describe her as a master of radiant, uninhibited color relationships and she presents us with dark, brooding images, luminous monochromes, or pale, light struck compositions devoid of chromatic color. Call her a radical innovator and we discover that, throughout her evolution, she has been engaged in a dialogue with the art of the past. Assign her to the ranks of uncompromising abstract painters and we notice that she is preternaturally attentive to the nuances of her surroundings, whether at home or abroad. And more, Frankenthaler is an American original who, over six decades, has both continued and expanded the modernist legacy.

Frankenthaler at Eighty: Six Decades opens to the public on Thursday, November 6th, and will remain on view through Saturday, January 10th. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated clothbound publication honoring the artist's eightieth birthday, with essay by Karen Wilkin.

About the curator: Karen Wilkin is a New York based independent curator and critic. She is the author of monographs on Stuart Davis, David Smith, Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Giorgio Morandi, and Hans Hofmann, and has organized exhibitions of their work internationally.

For additional information or images, please contact Melissa De Medeiros at 212-794-0564, or press@knoedlergallery.com

Note: Quotation from Helen Frankenthaler, recorded by E.A. Carmean, Jr., in conversation with the artist, Stamford, Connecticut, Summer 1988. Published in Helen Frankenthaler: A Paintings Retrospective (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, in association with the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 1989) page 36.