La
Sardana, Plaza Real, Un Poco Más, Ramblas (Ediciones Polígrafa)

This series marks a significant moment in Frankenthaler’s printmaking practice, created in collaboration with Ediciones Polígrafa in Barcelona. Working with this esteemed atelier allowed Frankenthaler to expand her technical vocabulary while retaining the painterly immediacy that defined her work throughout the 20th century. The series explores the cultural atmosphere of Barcelona not through figuration, but through the spatial and emotional impressions left by its plazas, movement, and Mediterranean light.

Each composition offers a distinct mood shaped by her nuanced colour choices. In Un Poco Más, Frankenthaler floats a cloud-like, pale gray-blue form within a charcoal ground - its weightless presence bordered and bracketed by deeper hues. A sequence of punctuating colours - tangerine, forest green, caramel - hover in the centre, while a broad plum stripe below them inject rhythmic balance and a subtle vertical tension. The print reveals Frankenthaler’s command of chromatic dissonance: the colours do not blend harmoniously but rather assert themselves individually, activating the surface through contrast and spatial dialogue.

Plaza Real, one of the most technically complex works in the series, exemplifies Frankenthaler’s mature print aesthetic. A glowing yellow field hosts layers of beige swirls and errant flecks of saturated pigment. These lighter gestures float above a solid strip of black at the base, which acts both as visual anchor and possible allusion to water - a recurring motif in her abstractions. Here, colour takes on a structural role: it defines space, evokes mood, and teases at form without settling into figuration. The work's labor-intensive layering process mirrors the compositional richness of her large-scale canvases, while its scale offers a more intimate, deliberate engagement with surface.

In La Sardana, Frankenthaler nods to the Catalan folk dance of the same name. Rather than depict movement literally, she channels its cadence and collectivity through swirling shapes and vibrant hues. The abstraction feels choreographic; gestures loop and hover, never static, evoking rhythm without narration. As with much of her work, Frankenthaler challenges the viewer to experience rather than interpret, to dwell in the interplay of colour and space.

Collectively, the series highlights Frankenthaler’s ability to translate the ethos of Color Field painting into new material forms; the result is a body of work that feels rooted in place and timeless in its abstraction.