A tireless innovator, American artist Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) left a significant mark in the art world with her original approach towards painting and printmaking. Born in New York City, Frankenthaler was quick to establish herself in the city’s art scene as a formidable figure of Abstract Expressionism, the first American art movement with a global influence. Her six-decade long career starting from the 1950s saw many accomplishments, including charting a fresh path for abstract painting through her breakthrough “soak-stain” technique. Today, she is widely recognised as one of the key pioneers of Colour Field painting within Abstract Expressionism, alongside Mark Rothko, Kenneth Noland and others.

Frankenthaler had an equally accomplished printmaking practice, which she earnestly pursued for close to five decades. Her entry into printmaking in 1961 coincided with its revitalisation in America in the late 1950s, where print workshops were championing artist-printer collaborations and pushing the boundaries of the medium. This came to be known as the American Print Rennaissance. The artist’s appetite for working with no rules perfectly matched this wave, leading to new expressions and technical innovations that contributed to the rebirth of fine art printmaking.

From 1976 to 2001, Frankenthaler produced over 70 works during her exceptional 26-year-long collaboration with American master printer Kenneth E. Tyler at his New York workshop, Tyler Graphics; a selection of these comprises most of this exhibition. The legendary print workshop, which was also STPI’s predecessor, prided itself on being an experimental space and had achieved great artistic and technical leaps with artists such as Frank Stella, David Hockney, Anni Albers and Joan Mitchell[EE3] . With Frankenthaler, the productive challenge was having to capture her paintings’ spontaneous liquid gestures for printmaking, of which were antithetical to the medium's typical outputs. Looking at her body of print works, one can conclude that the artist and Tyler had, indeed, successfully carved out a niche that was uniquely Frankenthaler’s.

At the heart of it, Frankenthaler was unyielding on making an image that looked as if it happened in an instant, enveloping her viewers in the immediacy and experiential atmosphere of the picture. Her distinctive and skilled painterly explorations, as well as her printmaking experiments and excellence, have cemented her place in art history as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

STPI would like to thank Singapore Art Museum, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York and Heritage Conservation Centre, Singapore for their support of this exhibition.

To learn more about the artist, visit the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation website here: [hyperlink to: https://www.frankenthalerfoundation.org/]