Helen Frankenthaler - 20th c. and Contemporary Art Day Sale - Morning Session New York Tuesday, December 8, 2020 | Phillips

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  • Over the Thanksgiving weekend of 1973, Helen Frankenthaler conceived of a rare series of 71 ceramic tiles, each uniquely painted and created with David Gil at Beddington Potters in Vermont. In the same year, she had started work on a monumental ceramic tile mural that was commissioned by the North Central Bronx Hospital. When the series of so-called Thanksgiving Day tiles were exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1975, Barbara Rose lauded Frankenthaler as an "experimenter with new media and new techniques.”i Indeed, in these works Frankenthaler remarkably translated the ethereal, suffused effect of her soaked canvases in the domain of ceramics.

     

     i Barbara Rose, “Tiles by Helen Frankenthaler”, Vogue, May 1975, p. 44

    • Provenance

      Rosa Esman Gallery, New York
      Private Collection (acquired from the above)

    • Exhibited

      New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Helen Frankenthaler: Tiles, May - June 1975, no. 39
      New York, Rosa Esman Gallery, Helen Frankenthaler: Ceramic Tiles, September 9 – October 4, 1975
      Syracuse, The Everson Museum of Art, A Century of Ceramics in the United States: 1878-1978, May 5 - September 23, 1979

    • Literature

      John Elderfield, Frankenthaler, New York, 1989, p. 243 (illustrated)

106

Thanksgiving Day Series (#13)

signed "Frankenthaler" lower right; further signed "Frankenthaler" on the reverse
ceramic tile, stoneware with glazes
13 3/8 x 17 1/2 in. (34 x 44.5 cm)
Executed in 1973, this work is from a series of 71 unique tiles.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$25,000 - 35,000 

Sold for $27,720

Contact Specialist

John McCord
Head of Day Sale, Morning Session
New York
+1 212 940 1261

jmccord@phillips.com

20th c. and Contemporary Art Day Sale - Morning Session

New York 8 December 2020