Helen Frankenthaler created a harmonious balance between volume and emptiness with the warm and cold colour forms at the edges of the large painting Spanning from 1971. She combined the free and spontaneous composition of poured paint with controlled diagonal coloured pencil strokes that seem to measure the size of the open space at the centre of the painting. In contrast to the landscape associations of her other paintings, Spanning is dominated by a newfound lightness, openness and generosity that gives the painting air and breath.
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011)
Spanning, 1971
Currently exhibited: Yes (Gallery: Colour's Dimension)
Material: Acrylic paint on canvas
Size: 270.5 x 363.9 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_295
Image rights: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Copyright: Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York
Keywords:
Previous owner: André Emmerich Gallery, New York; Security Pacific National Bank, Los Angeles; Bank of America Collection
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Sotheby’s, New York, 2013
Solo exhibition:
1972
‘Helen Frankenthaler’, Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon
Group exhibition:
2008
‘Reverberations. Modern and Contemporary Art from the Bank of America Collection’, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The 1970s began for Helen Frankenthaler with two upheavals. First, she changed studios. She moved into a coachhouse on East 83rd Street, just a block and a half west of her previous studio. In December 1970, she also decided to separate from Robert Motherwell, to whom she had been married since 1958. Spanning was created during this phase of renewal. With this work, Frankenthaler conquered a new space in both a private and artistic sense.
Helen Frankenthaler created a harmonious balance between volume and emptiness with the warm and cold colour forms at the edges of the large painting. She combined the free and spontaneous composition of poured paint with controlled diagonal coloured pencil strokes that seem to measure the size of the open space at the centre of the painting. In contrast to the landscape associations of her other paintings, Spanning is dominated by a newfound lightness, openness and generosity that gives her painting air and breath, as it had with One O’Clock (1965).
In 1983/84, she described herself as a ‘spacemaker’ in this context: ‘For me, as a picture develops, colour always comes out of drawing. I never start out only with colour. I start out as a spacemaker on a flat thing with four corners. […] The result is colour and space and, I hope, a beautiful message.’ [1]
[1] Helen Frankenthaler, 1983/84, in: Karen Wilkin: Frankenthaler: Works on Paper, 1949–1984, New York 1984, p. 69.