Helen Frankenthaler and Jo Sandman: Without Limits

Born a mere three years apart, both Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) and Jo Sandman (b. 1931) received their artistic training during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Both from the Northeastern part of the United States, New York in Frankenthaler’s case, and a close suburb of Boston in Sandman’s, both artists grew up in close-knit families and were privy to rigorous liberal arts educations that shaped them in important ways, Frankenthaler having attended Bennington, and Jo Sandman, Brandeis. Each received training from the celebrated artist Hans Hofmann, well-known for his articulation of a push-pull relationship between color and form. Sandman would also train with Robert Motherwell, who would later become Frankenthaler’s husband.

The exhibition Helen Frankenthaler and Jo Sandman: Without Limits, co-curated by Elisha Osemobor ’22 and Anne Collins Goodyear, Co-Director, explores what can be learned by juxtaposing the work of these two pioneering artists. The exhibition will be on view September 15, 2022, to March 15, 2023.  While Frankenthaler and Sandman were not personally acquainted, with Frankenthaler building her career from a base in New York City and Sandman ultimately settling near Boston, Massachusetts, the artists are linked in their determination to forge new creative pathways, breaking away from Abstract Expressionism and moving into revolutionary styles of art. Frankenthaler, while never abandoning painting, embraced ground-breaking printmaking, and Sandman turned toward process and conceptualism. Both artists pushed beyond the constraints of painting, not abandoning the medium, but advancing into exciting experimentation. Both came to recognize, although by employing different strategies, the exciting potentiality in redefining the relationship between pigment, mark, and surface in works of art. Together, the two artists mutually reveal the radicality of the experimentation in which each was embarked.

Drawn from recent gifts by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and the artist Jo Sandman, the show will feature ten editioned prints and eight related proofs donated by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation as part of their “Frankenthaler Prints Initiative” for university-affiliated museums, highlighting the artist’s experimentation with screen printing, lithography, etching, and Mixografia. Nine works given by Sandman showcase her innovative folded fabric drawings, collages, and mixed media pieces.

Programming for the exhibition kicks off this coming Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium. Ruth Fine, former Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art and a leading expert on modern and contemporary works on paper, will discuss Helen Frankenthaler’s prints. She will be joined by Katherine French, Curator of the Sandman Legacy Project, who will discuss the work of Jo Sandman. A reception at the Museum will follow the opening presentations.

It continues on Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 4:30 p.m., Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center, with presentations by the distinguished artists Richard Tuttle and Martha Tuttle, who will discuss their pioneering work in printmaking and other media.

 

Anne Collins Goodyear
Co-Director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

 

Illustration: Compressed Drawing, 1982, cooper wire, painted wooden pedestal, nails, by Jo Sandman, American, born 1931. Gift of the Artist. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 2020.36.3. © Jo Sandman/Sandman Legacy Project.