‘On Ocean Drive West you are always staring at horizon lines – horizon lines that vary” Frankenthaler explained. “There are hazed-out parts of Long Island across the Sound, parts of it can be visible, parts not… I wasn’t looking at nature or the seascape, but at the drawing within nature.’[1]
Hansel and Gretel belongs to a group of works in which Frankenthaler emphasized verticality. In some cases, she chose to turn paintings from a horizontal into a vertical format (as in Sea Level, 1976). At the same time, she increasingly worked with vertical bands of color that direct the viewer’s gaze upward (as in Lunar Avenue, 1975). During this period, she also began experimenting with masking tape, which she used to mask and reserve certain areas.
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011)
Hansel and Gretel, 1975
Currently exhibited: Yes (Helen Frankenthaler moves Jenny Bronsinksi, Ina Gerken, Adrian Schiess)
Material: acrylic on canvas
Size: 236,5 cm x 147 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_624
Image rights: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Copyright: Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York
Keywords:
Acquired: Reinhard Ernst Collection, 2025
Through its title, Hansel and Gretel inevitably evokes the sense of standing before an enchanted forest. Frankenthaler once described painting as ‘a kind of Hansel-and-Gretel trail of physical action’[2]– an apt image that reveals how painting, for her, was never merely representation but an embodied tracing of space and surface, a process of exploration and discovery. Indeed, she left an actual trace of her poodle Martell in the painting, where he had walked across the canvas in her studio.
Currently exhibited: Yes
Material: acrylic on canvas
Size: 236,5 cm x 147 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_624
Keywords: Abstract Expressionism, Color field painting
