Helen Frankenthaler: Innovation in the Woodcut

Helen Frankenthaler - Savage Breeze - 1974 - Seven-color woodcut on Nepalese laminiated light brown hand-made paper - sheet: 80 x 68.6 cm (31 1/2 x 27 in.) National Gallery of Art - Washington, D.C. (click photo for larger image)Depicting an open space above a mountain-like divide, Savage Breeze was Frankenthaler's first foray into the medium of woodcut. Her concern in this work with achieving the same vibrant color and amorphous forms as found in her paintings led to a major technical innovation for this art form.

The artist cut a thin sheet of plywood into separately inked shapes and then, in collaboration with ULAE (Universal Limited Art Editions), the Long Island studio that printed the work, devised a special method for eliminating the white lines between them when printing.

The newly designed technique—hailed by one writer as "a departure so profound that virtually all subsequent woodcuts incorporated the thinking it embodied”—had a major impact on subsequent printmaking. (Excerpted from The ArtStory)

Savage Breeze is far removed from the graphic appearance of the traditional woodblock print, giving the appearance of painted, rather than carved, wood.