This Is Not a Book
1995-1996, published 1997
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
illustrated book with five etching, photo-etching, aquatint, and mezzotint (two with stencil-applied opaque watercolor); two etching and photo-etching (one with stencil-applied opaque watercolor); two etching, photo-etching, and aquatint (one with stencil-applied opaque watercolor); and two lithographs (including title page and half-title page)
Classification
Volume
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Neal T. Turtell and Thomas G. Klarner
Accession Number
2022.35.19.2
Art Historical Context
Helen Frankenthaler's *This Is Not a Book* (1995–1996, published 1997) is a captivating illustrated volume that showcases the artist's late-career mastery of printmaking. Comprising five etchings, photo-etchings,atints, and mezzints (some enhanced with stencil-applied opaque), along with additional etchings, photo-etchings, aquatints, and lithographs—including the title and half-title pages—this work transforms the traditional book format into a dynamic fusion of image and text. Generously gifted to the National Gallery of Art by Neal T. Turtell and Thomas G. Klarner, it resides in the museum'...
About the Artist
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) was born in New York City into a cultivated family; her father was a justice of the New York Supreme Court. She studied painting at the Dalton School under the Mexican muralist Rufino Tamayo and went on to Bennington College in Vermont, graduating in 1949. Returning to New York, she entered the circle of the Abstract Expressionist painters and studied with Hans Hofm...