Helen Frankenthal in Rome with the exhibition "Sea Change"

Gagosian presents with the exhibition "Sea Change" twelve canvases that Frankenthaler painted between 1974 and 1983, reflecting his reactions to the changing appearance of moving tides, works created in the house at Shippan Point in Stamford, Connecticut, facing the waters of Long Island Soun

An early canvas, Ocean Drive West #1 (1974), with its oceanic floating horizontal bands, seems to recede across an expanse of transparent blue. In Jupiter (1976) and Reflection (1977), the bands are grouped and turned vertically, but which dissolve. In both of these paintings, the warm earthy colors of the bands contrast with a cool blue-green, evoking the meeting of land and water. The large, sweeping canvases, Tunis II and Dream Walk Red (both 1978), exude warmth, with layers of dark red, pink, crimson, sienna, and scarlet. Around this time, Frankenthaler spoke of “doing more for each image”, to create something that was at the same time more complex.

In Feather (1979), Omen (1980), and Shippan Point: Twilight (1980), colors mix, overlap, and fold into each other to produce soft, unlovable shades. The dabs and dots and dashes of yellow pigment in Omen presaged the ambitiously scaled horizontal canvases that followed, with thick wisps and trails of darker color pigment on lighter atmospheric ground in Sacrifice Decision (1981), or lighter on Darker in Eastern Light (1982). The last canvas in the exhibition, Silver Express (1983), makes it clear that Frankenthaler no longer thinks of water and instead imagines moving on a flat and resistant surface, in this case, on the edge of that more urban space, in the square.

Helen Frankenthaler's Paintings, 1952-1992 will open at Palazzo Grimani, Venice on 7 May and will remain on view until 17 November. Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. Exponent among the second generation of American abstract painters of the postwar era is widely recognized as having played a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Her works can be found in major museums and collections around the world and her career has been the subject of important publications including three important monographs and numerous institutional exhibitions