Why is Tyler Graphics Portfolio important?

The Tyler Graphics Portfolio occupies a crucial place within Frankenthaler’s artistic trajectory, capturing a moment of deep experimentation and technical mastery. At a time when many of her contemporaries were revisiting traditional modes, Frankenthaler turned decisively toward printmaking not as a subsidiary practice, but as a vital continuation of her painterly concerns. The portfolio underscores her commitment to abstraction’s emotional and formal possibilities, proving that the medium of print could bear the same expressive weight as canvas. By expanding the language of the print through unconventional applications of ink, paper, and pressure, she challenged assumptions about the flatness and rigidity of the printed image. These works were not only critically acclaimed but also instrumental in establishing the status of printmaking as a serious artistic pursuit in late twentieth-century American art.

Process and Collaboration

One of the most compelling aspects of the series is Frankenthaler’s collaboration with Kenneth Tyler, who offered Frankenthaler close guidance and access to his New York workshop. Each work is the result of close, physical interaction between the artist and her medium, where spontaneous gesture meets mechanical precision. Across the series, Frankenthaler’s enduring dialogue with the natural world emerges through allusion - evoking the movement of water, the layering of sediment, or the rhythms of wind and time.

How do I buy a Tyler Graphics Portfolio print?

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How can I sell my Tyler Graphics Portfolio print?

If you're looking to sell art by Helen Frankenthaler, click the link and we can help. We employ a number of techniques and practices in order to give a realistic and achievable valuation on any art listed on myartbroker.com. We analyse the demand for the work in question, take into consideration previous sales and auction valuations, we assess the current gallery valuation and monitor the current deals taking place via MyArtBroker every day. We regularly advise sellers on a price bracket for their artwork completely free of charge.

Tyler Graphics Portfolio by Helen Frankenthaler Background & Meaning

Tyler
Graphics Portfolio

In 1987, Helen Frankenthaler created her Tyler Graphics Portfolio series, producing ten prints including key works such as Tiger’s Eye and Day One. Here, Frankenthaler moves fluently between lithography, aquatint, and intaglio processes, exploring how colour and form behave under pressure, imprint, and repetition.

Meaning & Analysis

In this portfolio, Frankenthaler collaborated with master printers at Tyler Graphics to translate her fluid painting style into print. Rather than replicating her painting practice, Frankenthaler uses printmaking to distil its essence - exploring material resistance, layering, and nuance.

In Sudden Snow, a lithograph teeming with silvery greys, ghostly whites, and eruptions of violet and turquoise, Frankenthaler creates a surface that feels atmospheric. Here, colour does not fill space so much as it bleeds through it - evoking the sensation of melting frost or a storm dissolving into slush. Subtle textures suggest physical erosion, while the occasional gestural mark punctuates the otherwise misty field.

Tiger’s Eye, in contrast, is a compact, moody aquatint whose murky green tones and raw sienna band ground the image in the earth. A single red flare appears like an ember - a visual contrast that recalls the tension between form and formlessness, precision and suggestion. The organic shapes feel excavated rather than drawn, as if pressed out from layers beneath the surface. Frankenthaler’s manipulation of aquatint allows for an incredible range of tonal variation, from the powdery softness of the green wash to the granular edge of the ochre base.

The lithograph Tribal Sign is a dense field of rust, black, and sandy beige that covers the image, its rough, dragged textures suggesting weathered surfaces or the grain of wood. Over this, Frankenthaler inscribes a looping, linear gesture in green which sits delicately atop the rough base. The result is a composition that feels simultaneously ancient and modern, organic and composed.

In each of the ten prints, Frankenthaler subverts the usual hierarchy between painting and print. These are not reproductions or derivations, but fully realised investigations into the materiality of surface and the expressive potential of colour. Working with Tyler Graphics allowed her to push the limits of each medium - using lithography for transparency and gesture, and aquatint for density and tonal depth. The result is a body of work that holds its own alongside her most celebrated canvases.

The Tyler Graphics Portfolio occupies a crucial place within Frankenthaler’s artistic trajectory, capturing a moment of deep experimentation and technical mastery. At a time when many of her contemporaries were revisiting traditional modes, Frankenthaler turned decisively toward printmaking not as a subsidiary practice, but as a vital continuation of her painterly concerns. The portfolio underscores her commitment to abstraction’s emotional and formal possibilities, proving that the medium of print could bear the same expressive weight as canvas. By expanding the language of the print through unconventional applications of ink, paper, and pressure, she challenged assumptions about the flatness and rigidity of the printed image. These works were not only critically acclaimed but also instrumental in establishing the status of printmaking as a serious artistic pursuit in late twentieth-century American art.
One of the most compelling aspects of the series is Frankenthaler’s collaboration with Kenneth Tyler, who offered Frankenthaler close guidance and access to his New York workshop. Each work is the result of close, physical interaction between the artist and her medium, where spontaneous gesture meets mechanical precision. Across the series, Frankenthaler’s enduring dialogue with the natural world emerges through allusion - evoking the movement of water, the layering of sediment, or the rhythms of wind and time.
If you're looking to sell art by Helen Frankenthaler, click the link and we can help. We employ a number of techniques and practices in order to give a realistic and achievable valuation on any art listed on myartbroker.com. We analyse the demand for the work in question, take into consideration previous sales and auction valuations, we assess the current gallery valuation and monitor the current deals taking place via MyArtBroker every day. We regularly advise sellers on a price bracket for their artwork completely free of charge.