Helen Frankenthaler Mauve District Poster

Description

Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter who was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. This poster features a reproduction of Helen Frankenthaler’s 1966 painting Mauve District, an artwork in MoMA’s collection. The poster measures 31.5h x 27″w. 

In 1969 Frankenthaler wrote of Mauve District, “It relates to a theme which appears on-and-off, of pictures that often have one central vast shape, district, or territory; in this case, the shape itself (a square) is a play on the very shape of the canvas.” The artist’s delight in spatial play is also evident in the wedge of exposed raw canvas, a common motif in her work. 

Although it is a negative space, it also conjures the edge of a tilted square-a form that can be perceived as either advancing or receding in relation to the mauve square it borders. “I have always been concerned with painting that simultaneously insists on a flat surface and then denies it,” Frankenthaler has said.