Fluid Expressions: The Prints of Helen Frankenthaler

A detail of an abstract color print in various shades of hot pink, with a horizontal thin blue line across the center and several blue dots in the lower right.
March 18–September 10, 2017
Second floor

Although widely known for her iconic “soak-stain” canvases, Helen Frankenthaler was an equally inventive printmaker who took risks in a medium not frequently explored by abstract expressionists. Fluid Expressions: The Prints of Helen Frankenthaler highlights the artist’s often overlooked, yet highly original and whimsical print production.

Drawn from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, this exhibition includes more than 25 prints made from a diverse range of techniques, including lithographs, etchings, aquatints, screenprints, and woodcuts. The artist’s adaptation of her soak-stain aesthetic for the graphic medium offers a stunning look at how printmaking—notorious for being a slow, methodical process—can exude a sense of spontaneity and immediacy. From splattered pigments to translucent layers of ink, the radiant prints brought together here pulse with creative energy.

Helen Frankenthaler

Japanese Maple, 2005

Woodcut

An abstract color print in various shades of hot pink, with a horizontal thin blue line across the center and several blue dots in the lower right.

Helen Frankenthaler

Grey Fireworks, 2000

Silkscreen

An abstract color print with a mostly blue-gray background and splotches in dark gray, blue, green, brown, yellow, with hints of pink.

Helen Frankenthaler

Beginnings, 2002

Silkscreen

An abstract color print: orange on the top, bottom, and left including a circle with a yellow dot in the center, several pink dots and lines, a vertical organic green shape, and squiggly blue, gray, and purple lines.

Helen Frankenthaler

Spoleto, 1972

Silkscreen

An abstract color print: yellow background with an organic red shape in the upper left, organic orange shape in the upper right, a wide organic green shape at the bottom, and several black lines in an X shape in the middle.

Download a 14-page booklet that accompanied the exhibition.

Installation Photos

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All Exhibitions

Fluid Expressions: The Prints of Helen Frankenthaler is drawn from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, who through a generous grant also made possible the associated publication and programming.