Crete
Helen Frankenthaler
American, 1928–2011
1969–72
Crete is an etching and aquatint in which Helen Frankenthaler translates her painterly, color-field gestures into a print, aiming to capture the spontaneity and floating presence of her brushlike forms.
Two broad, pillowy swaths—a warm rust above and a smoky graphite below—seem to hover in a wide white field, their mass counterpointed by thin, calligraphic black lines that suggest delicacy and movement.
The work registers Frankenthaler’s effort to adapt her soak‑stain, gestural vocabulary to printmaking, expanding the expressive range of etching and aquatint within postwar abstraction.
Medium
Etching and aquatint
Dimensions
plate: 13 1/2 × 18 7/8" (34.3 × 47.9 cm); sheet: 22 3/8 × 27 1/8" (56.8 × 68.9 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Celeste Bartos
Accession
229.1972
Palette
Exhibitions
