Among our new acquisitions are works by the great American artists Helen Frankenthaler, Richard Diebenkorn and Ellsworth Kelly. Each of these artists was a masterful colorist, who used their skills to create powerful paintings and prints.
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler influenced other great artists, like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, with her massive Color Field paintings.In 1960, Frankenthaler was invited to work at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) studio in Long Island. ULAE was just starting up, and looking for promising young artists who would help the studio make its mark as a premier print venue. Frankenthaler continued to make prints and woodcuts throughout her career, with both ULAE and the outstanding printmaker, Kenneth Tyler.
In 1978, Frankenthaler created a screenprint to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra. An edition of this print and Flotilla, an exceptional 73 color screenprint are available at Vertu.
Inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Frankenthaler studied and created woodcuts that reflected, not only the ukiyo-e tradition, but the unique use of color that is a signature of all of her work.
Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn is best known for his large, color field Ocean Park Paintings. Like Frankenthaler, Diebenkorn expanded his work to include prints and woodcuts. Diebenkorn was greatly influenced by his surroundings. Blue on Red shows the California that Diebenkorn saw from his studio. As with much of his work, Blue on Red is part cartography, part architecture and all bold and beautiful.
Ellsworth Kelly
Like Frankenthaler and Diebenkorn, Ellsworth Kelly used large, strong fields of color in his work. He used solid colors within geometric shapes to create his best known works. Kelly softened his approach to color with his works on colored paper, some of which are in the National Gallery in Washington, DC. Colored Paper Image XVI, is an example of the softened lines and colors Kelly used to create these amazing works from handmade paper and pulp.
Please contact us for more information about the work of these, and the other great artists, whose works are in our Vertu Fine Art Gallery.