Los Angeles, CA (August, 2020) - Mixografia is pleased to present Helen Frankenthaler: A Certain Magic, featuring editions created in collaboration with Helen Frankenthaler throughout 1989.

Although primarily recognized for her accomplishments as a painter, Frankenthaler was also an innovative printmaker who worked with publishers and master printers to create a large body of editions using a variety of techniques including lithography, etching, relief, and monotype. Mixografia is pleased to present a selection of prints from this influential body of work, and to emphasize Frankenthaler’s wide-ranging embrace of the medium’s experimental potential. As she ventured into printmaking, she discovered a collaborative approach that contrasted her studio practice. Speaking about the process of working with printmakers, she says: “I wanted things that I couldn’t at times articulate […] but between our exchange we got this music”. Through her creative synergy with master printers, Frankenthaler was able to overcome some of the technical specificities of print media, and ultimately achieved the sense of gestural spontaneity that was central to her way of working.

In 1989, Frankenthaler produced a series of monumental editions with Mixografia following a serendipitous encounter at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, on the occasion of the Museum’s grand opening and during which her work was featured. Already well known for her work in prints, she ultimately saw in the Mixografia process yet another opportunity to expand the possibilities of her work within printmaking. She employed a range of multimedia techniques, using poured wax, power tools, layering material, and brute force to create printing surfaces that achieved a level of textural complexity akin to the built surface of a painting, which she could not achieve with the traditional flatness of other printmaking methods.