Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler
Untitled (Original cover for "The Blue Stairs", a book of poetry by Barbara Guest)
1968
Acrylic and crayon on card 20.5 x 15.3 cm. Framed under glass. Monogrammed 'HF'. Direction arrow and information verso. - Minor traces of age.
Provenance
Collection Barbara Guest, California; private collection, Hong Kong
Exhibitions
New York 1985 (Solomon Guggenheim Museum), Edmonton (The Edmonton Art Gallery), Toronto (Art Gallery of Ontario), Cambridge (Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University), Baltimore (The Baltimore Museum of Art), San Francisco (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), Houston (Museum of Fine Arts), Frankenthaler, Works on paper 1949-1984, exhib.cat.no.36, p.56 with illus. (label verso)
Literature
Barbara Guest, The Blue Stairs, New York 1968 (with col. illus. on the cover)
The expressive work on paper by Helen Frankenthaler offered here was created in 1968 as the title illustration for the poetry collection “The blue stairs” by the poet and art critic Barbara Guest (1920-2006). Guest was a representative of the New York School of Poets, a group of poets close to the visual artists of the New York School, whose spontaneous and humorous poems were influenced by literary Surrealism and Abstract Expressionist painting.
As a small format, the monochrome work condenses the light, minimised and immensely powerful aura inherent in Frankenthaler’s works on paper and shows the characteristics that also determine her paintings: the colour that penetrates the painting ground in an organic way, the unpainted paper that, like the raw canvas of her paintings, contributes significantly to the picture’s message, and finally the subtle references to natural shapes. “What is striking is the single-mindedness of Frankenthaler’s concerns at this time; the notions she explored in watercolors, gouaches, graphics, book cover studies and large canvases are remarkably consistent. Even a small and modest work, such as the study for the cover of Barbara Guest’s book of poetry (1968) contains all of Frankenthaler's preoccupations and strengths in miniature,” writes Karen Wilkin on this work (Karen Wilkin, in: Frankenthaler, Works on paper 1949-1984, New York 1984, p.70).
Frankenthaler’s works on paper are of extraordinary importance for her oeuvre. As an expression of her mastery of drawing and colouring, they are never merely a preparatory stage, but are equally valid alongside her large-format paintings. For this reason, the Museum Folkwang Essen is dedicating the exhibition “Helen Frankenthaler. Malerische Konstellationen [painterly constellations]” to her works on paper, commencing December 2022.
