Helen Frankenthaler – The Incredible Lightness of Beauty

Abstract

Radical Beauty, a first ever show of Helen Frankenthaler’s woodcuts at Dulwich Picture Gallery in the United Kingdom, provides a great insight into this American painter’s approach to woodcut printmaking. Throughout her career Frankenthaler returned to woodcuts as an alternative to the freeform soak ‘n stain painting technique she initiated, that later evolved into Colour Field Abstraction. The remarkable ‘painterliness’ of these woodcut works, involving a jigsaw technique and the plywood medium, draws parallels with Norwegian modernist Edvard Munch’s. Frankenthaler’s radical innovations challenged traditions of the woodcut medium while enabling a new generation of printmakers to go still further. As the author demonstrates, Helen Frankenthaler was a painter who changed the face of printmaking forever.