?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
HELEN FRANKENTHALER Plaza Real.
Color soft-ground etching, etcing and aquatint on White Rives BFK paper, 1987. 505x670 mm; 19 7/8x26 3/8 inches, full margins. Signed, dated and numbered 21/60 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by Polígrafa, Barcelona. A very good impression.
According to Harrison, the original version of this work was drawn by Frankenthaler on her first day woking at Ediciones Polígrafa in Barcelona, "And although she later added the stroke of black across the bottom, she did nothing else to change the initial idea. The copper plate was evenly-coated with a varnis; using a rag soaked in turpentine, Frankenthaler dissovled the varnish to expose the copper below. She was able to manipulate the drawing by controlling the quantity of turpentine on the rag. The results are fluid and spontaneous, giving the black image [the element upper center ultimately printed in bluish gray] a wide range of density . . . For the final edition, the plate was printed in five colors with thje red and blue relief printed from the three raised circular areas on the copper plate." Harrison 139.
