Pace Prints is pleased to present Three Artists: Helen Frankenthaler, Howard Hodgkin, Pat Steir on the 4th floor of our galleries at 521 West 26thStreet. The exhibition is intended as an environment in which to consider five prints and monoprints of gestural abstraction by these three artists, who have each contributed to contemporary art in immeasurable ways. All the exhibited works highlight the best of what printmaking collaborations can offer.
Helen Frankenthaler worked with Pace Prints between 2003 and 2009, creating five works that show the artist’s range as a printmaker. The ukiyo-e woodcuts Geisha and Snow Pines have been exhibited globally including recent exhibitions in Oslo, Norway, Houston, TX, and Philadelphia, PA. Book of Clouds, a triptych created with aquatint etching, woodcut, pochoir and hand-painting, required more than two years to complete. The print stands as a monument to the strength of Frankenthaler’s vision and the virtuosity and dedication of the printmakers who collaborated on this project.
Howard Hodgkin’s Into the Woods, Spring is a technical tour-de-force executed on a scale virtually unheard of in printmaking. The work, an aquatint etching with additional carborundum plates measuring 80 by 105 inches, hangs without frame or glass to interrupt or fence in its colossal presence. Hodgkin, who often painted his frames, has given us an image that fills the viewer’s field of vision with the deep blues and greens of spring. The artist created a cycle of four prints on this scale, one for each season.
Pat Steir creates her hand-painted monoprints in much the same way as her painted works, utilizing chance and time to build the composition. After collaborating with the printmakers to create unique combinations of screenprinted layers, Steir works with the prints hung on her studio wall. As she paints on the printed images, paint is poured, dripped, and flung on the surface. Steir allows chance and time to determine much of the outcome of each piece. In Steir’s monoprints, the unpredictable marks and the artist’s brushstrokes complete the image.