Message from Degas
Helen Frankenthaler
American, 1928–2011
1972–74
An etching and aquatint print in which Helen Frankenthaler adapts her painterly, wash-like gestures to printmaking to evoke a lyrical exchange with the work of Degas.
A sweeping, warm ochre arc cuts across a velvety, mottled black-gray field, the edges feathering and graining like stained fabric so that the image reads as both a soft wash and a carved form in motion.
The print translates Frankenthaler’s color-field, soak‑stain sensibility into intaglio technique, linking Abstract Expressionist concerns with gesture and color to a broader art‑historical conversation and expanding what printmaking could express.
Medium
Etching and aquatint
Dimensions
plate: 7 7/16 × 9 13/16" (18.9 × 25 cm); sheet: 13 3/4 × 17 1/8" (34.9 × 43.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Celeste Bartos
Accession
6.1975
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
