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One of her largest paintings Helen Frankenthaler ever made, Off White Square features the expressive expanses of pure color which characterize the highly-acclaimed body of work she created during the 1970s. The work is a masterpiece of her mature style, showcasing her transition from thinned acrylics to diluted oil paints during one of the most pivotal decades of Frankenthaler’s career. Having arrested viewers for decades, the work was deemed by The New York Times as the “centerpiece” of the exhibition at the Clark Art Institute, As In Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings.i
The present lot installed at Helen Frankenthaler: Recent Paintings, David Mirvish Gallery, May 26 - June 16, 1973 "The drop-everything, must-see painting in the [Clark Art Institute] show is Off White Square, an astoundingly beautiful work that, at 79 3/4 inches tall and 255 1/2 inches wide, commands an entire wall and everything else around it."
— Thomas Micchelli
The present work photographed at Ace Gallery in Vancouver. Published in The Vancouver Sun, April 10, 1975. Artwork © Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York One of the most influential artists of post-war abstraction, Helen Frankenthaler created brilliantly evocative paintings that reinterpreted her personal experiences and memories in a unique visual language. Her work, such as Off White Square, built upon the expressive focus on color espoused by her forbearers such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Hans Hofmann; indeed, art critic Joan Lowndes observed in 1975 that “one can trace [in Off White Square] the artist’s debt to Hans Hofmann’s ‘push and pull’ principle, as the square appears to push out and lay on top of the rest of the canvas.”ii Clearly content with the visual effect of this motif—in which a colossal work is brought into balance by a white square—Frankenthaler returned to it in Natural Answer from 1976, which is now housed at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Helen Frankenthaler, Natural Answer, 1976. Art Gallery of Ontario, Artwork © Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York A New Approach
Earlier in 1973—the same year she executed Off White Square—the Fourth National Bank and Trust in Wichita, Kansas, commissioned Frankenthaler to design a tapestry for their lobby. The powerful, fresh composition of the maquettes she created for the project—as well as the resulting tapestry—reveal the beginnings of Frankenthaler’s exploration of the horizontal vitality that permeates Off White Square. The work is part of an ambitious group of monumental landscape works executed in 1973-1974, including Moveable Blue and The Sound of the Bassoon, which were the culmination of this investigation of her new format.
Maquette for Helen Frankenthaler’s tapestry for the Fourth National Bank and Trust in Wichita Kansas. Artwork © Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York While showcasing Frankenthaler’s signature and career-long use of diluted paint, Off White Square betrays a renewed assurance and shift in focus to all-over composition. “Off White Square... shows her at the top of her game, pouring, painting, and drawing with complete confidence,” according to renowned curator Douglas Dreishpoon. “She surely had a hot hand, trusted her instincts, and went for broke.”iii
Monumental Paintings by Frankenthaler, 1973-1974
A Master of Color
Off White Square exemplifies the highly expressive body of work that Frankenthaler produced during her crucial transition from gestural abstraction to paintings filled with large areas of refined. Her idiosyncratic use of color and form coalesce to establish an intense visual dynamism within the picture, proclaiming the artist’s true mastery of color for which her work is so renowned. Though Lowndes identified “some delectably subtle passages as well as starting hot pinks and dazzling whites” in Off White Square,iv it is anything but easy to characterize the remaining shades and shapes in the composition. Redolent of Henri Matisse’s cut-outs or Vasily Kandinsky’s compositions, her works are defined by their tonal harmony rather than as an arrangement of distinct pictorial elements. “It’s impossible to pin down a Frankenthaler color because it will strengthen and shift and behave as contrarily as it pleases, in relation to surrounding colors,” art critic Kay Kritzwiser elucidated in 1973. “In Off White Square, that sherberty color is sharper in its alliance with tougher colors.”v Revealing Frankenthaler’s painterly adroitness at the apex of her career, this visual harmony exudes the freshness and inner light that embody Off White Square.
"[Frankenthaler’s] paintings are not merely beautiful. They are statements of great intensity and significance about what it is to stay alive, to face crisis and survive, to accept maturity with grace and even joy."
— Barbara Rose
Mark Rothko, No. 11/No. 20, 1949. Collection of Christopher Rothko, Photographed by Christopher Burke / Art Resource, Artwork © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Collector’s Digest
• Though the contributions of woman Abstract Expressionists have historically been overshadowed by their male peers, a recent reconsideration of Helen Frankenthaler’s oeuvre has precipitated unprecedented demand in her market.
• Her top three results at auction were all achieved in 2020; her world record stands at $7,895,300.
i Nancy Princenthal, “Berkshire Tour: Formalism Relaxes, Handcraft Goes Digital,” The New York Times, August 30, 2017, online.
ii Joan Lowndes, “The Human Edge: It’s the Frankenthaler Effect in Painting,” The Vancouver Sun, April 10, 1975, p. 29.
iii Douglas Dreishpoon, Giving Up One’s Mark: Helen Frankenthaler in the 1960s and 1970s, exh. cat., Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, p. 17.
iv Joan Lowndes, “The Human Edge,” p. 29.
v Kay Kritzwiser, “A Color Master Controlling Magnitude,” The Globe and Mail, Toronto, June 2, 1973, p. 32.Provenance
David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto
Ace Gallery, Vancouver
Joan and Robert Weiss, California
Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, November 8, 1979, lot 860
HSBC Corporate Art Collection, London (acquired at the above sale)
Sotheby’s, New York, May 11, 2005, lot 250
Private Collection (acquired at the above sale)
William Louis-Dreyfus (acquired from the above in 2014)
Thence by descent to the present owners in 2016Exhibited
Toronto, David Mirvish Gallery, Helen Frankenthaler: Recent Paintings, May 26 - June 16, 1973
Vancouver, Ace Gallery, Helen Frankenthaler: Major Paintings, April - May 17, 1975
Colorado, Denver Art Museum; Washington, D.C., Smithsonian American Art Museum; Nashville, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975, November 9, 2007 – September 21, 2008, pl. 11, p. 118 (illustrated, n.p.)
Williamstown, Clark Art Institute, As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings, July 1 – October 9, 2017, p. 72 (illustrated on the frontispiece and pp. 48-49; further illustrated on the exhibition calendar)
New York, 860 Washington Street, November 2017 - September 2020 (on loan)Literature
Kay Kritzwiser, “At the Galleries: A Color Master Controlling Magnitude”, The Globe and Mail, June 2, 1973, p. 32
Joan Lowndes, “The Human Edge: it’s the Frankenthaler effect in painting”, The Vancouver Sun, April 10, 1975, p. 31 (Ace Gallery, Vancouver, 1975, installation view illustrated)
Helen Frankenthaler: Toward a New Climate, PBS special, produced by Perry Miller Adato, March 6, 1978
John Elderfield, Frankenthaler, New York, 1989, p. 401 (illustrated, p. 236)
Giving Up One’s Mark: Helen Frankenthaler in the 1960s and 1970s, exh. cat., Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York, 2014, fig. 11, p. 17 (illustrated)
Property from the Louis-Dreyfus Family Collections
Ο◆27
Off White Square
signed and dated “Frankenthaler ‘73” lower left
acrylic on canvas
79 1/2 x 255 1/4 in. (201.9 x 648.3 cm)
Painted in 1973.
Estimate
$2,800,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $3,720,500
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Auctions
New York
+1 212 940 1278
20th c. & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 7 December 2020
1
Amy Sherald
The Bathers
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $4,265,000
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2
Jadé Fadojutimi
Lotus Land
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $378,000
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3
Vaughn Spann
Big Black Rainbow (Deep Dive)
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $239,400
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4
Matthew Wong
Before Night Falls
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $1,252,100
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5
Ruth Asawa
Untitled (S.045, Hanging Five-Lobed, Multilayered Continuous Form within a Form, with Spheres in the First, Second and Third Lobes)
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $3,539,000
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6
Agnes Martin
Untitled
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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7
Morris Louis
Infield
Estimate $900,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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8
Donald Judd
Untitled
Estimate $3,000,000 - 4,000,000
Sold for $3,539,000
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9
Richard Diebenkorn
Untitled (Berkeley)
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $478,800
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10
David Hockney
Nichols Canyon
Estimate On Request
Sold for $41,067,500
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11
Amoako Boafo
Purple on Red
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $756,000
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12
Barkley L. Hendricks
Selina/Star
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $937,500
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13
Norman Rockwell
The Peephole
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $2,087,000
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14
Clyfford Still
PH-407
Estimate On Request
Sold for $18,442,500
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15
Glenn Ligon
Stranger #67
Estimate $1,400,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,784,500
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16
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Portrait of A-One A.K.A. King
Estimate $10,000,000 - 15,000,000
Sold for $11,500,000
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17
Titus Kaphar
Veil
Estimate $70,000 - 90,000
Sold for $365,400
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18
René Magritte
Untitled (Woman's Face covered by a Rose)
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $2,329,000
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19
Norman Rockwell
An Audience of One
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
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20
Pablo Picasso
Deux personnages
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $2,147,500
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21
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $9,000,000 - 12,000,000
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22
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (678-1)
Estimate $3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Sold for $4,265,000
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23
Alexander Calder
Dot + Loop
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $2,329,000
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24
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $10,000,000 - 15,000,000
Sold for $11,297,500
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25
Roy Lichtenstein
Nude with Joyous Painting (Study)
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,672,500
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26
George Condo
Transparent Female Forms
Estimate $3,500,000 - 5,500,000
Sold for $4,265,000
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27
Helen Frankenthaler
Off White Square
Estimate $2,800,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $3,720,500
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28
Morris Louis
Beth Sin
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
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29
Georg Baselitz
Forstarbeiter
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,087,000
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30
Charles White
Roots
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $877,000
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31
Roy Lichtenstein
Coup de Chapeau I
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $937,500
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32
This lot is no longer available.
33
Kehinde Wiley
Portrait of Mickalene Thomas, the Coyote
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $378,000
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34
René Magritte
Le Choeur des Sphinges
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $3,115,500
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35
Mickalene Thomas
I've Been Good To Me
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $901,200
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36
This lot is no longer available.
37
Ed Ruscha
Local Storms
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
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38
This lot is no longer available.