Helen Frankenthaler Prints: Seven Types of Ambiguity

Helen Frankenthaler. "Madame Butterfly", 2000. Color woodcut. © 2019 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Tyler Graphics, Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York

Helen Frankenthaler Prints: Seven Types of Ambiguity celebrates the generous gift of ten prints and five related trial proofs from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation to the Princeton University Art Museum. Spanning five decades and more than a dozen distinct technical processes, these works represent the continuous and generative role of printmaking in Frankenthaler’s oeuvre while also tracing the ascendance of the American Print Renaissance and the emergence of a critical discourse for abstraction in the latter half of the twentieth century. Featuring approximately fifty works in total, the exhibition draws the prints from the Foundation’s gift into conversation with additional works variously focusing on Frankenthaler’s compositional language, working process, collaborations, evocations of place, and historical referents, revealing the vitality of the artist’s work in prints throughout her remarkable career.

Helen Frankenthaler Prints: Seven Types of Ambiguity is made possible through the generosity of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

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This exhibition is further supported by the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund in American Art; Susan and John Diekman, Class of 1965; Heather Sturt Haaga and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970; Roberta and Jonathan Golden, Class of 1959; the Robert Wood Johnson III Fund of the Princeton Area Community Foundation; the Julis Rabinowitz Family; Christopher E. Olofson, Class of 1992; the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; and the Partners and Friends of the Princeton University Art Museum.

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