By the age of thirty-two, Helen Frankenthaler (1928—2011) had established herself in a white male-dominated art world as one of the leading American Abstract Expressionist painters of the twentieth century. Her distinctive “soak-stain” technique—applying thinned paint onto unprimed canvases on the floor to produce watercolor-like effects—introduced chance as an integral part of her artistic process. Printmaking, a technical process involving chemistry, collaboration, and repetition, might appear at odds with the spontaneity and physicality of her painting.

Beginning in 1961 through the 2000s, Frankenthaler made more than three hundred print editions, experimenting with etching, lithography, silkscreen, woodcut, and more. In collaboration with workshops including Universal Limited Art Editions, 2RC, Tyler Graphics, Ediciones Polígrafa, and Garner Tullis—each represented in this exhibition—she translated her painterly concerns into print, in her words, “with new materials.” Over the course of her decades-long explorations in print, she distinguished herself not only as one of the few Abstract Expressionists to deeply engage the print medium, but also as an artist who innovated across painting and printmaking, pushing both in new directions.

In 2023, the Henry received a transformative gift of prints and proofs through the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s Prints Initiative. Now on view at the Henry for the first time, these works trace the arc of Frankenthaler’s print career from early experiments to later technical innovations. Collectively, they highlight the collaborative ethos of printmaking as a creative practice while revealing how Frankenthaler reimagined the possibilities of both mediums to forge new dialogues.

Two recent works by Analia Saban (b. 1980, Buenos Aires; lives and works in Los Angeles) extend Frankenthaler’s experiments into the present. Saban’s multidisciplinary practice explores how emerging technologies relate to traditional histories of art, sharing with Frankenthaler’s work a commitment to materiality, abstraction, and reconfiguring what a painting—or a print—is.

Learn more about the Henry’s collections here.