‘Push and Pull’ highlights abstract artists at UNM Art Museum

On Jan. 31, the University of New Mexico Art Museum opened its exhibit “Push & Pull: The Prints of Helen Frankenthaler and Her Contemporaries.”

The exhibit showcases the work of abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, whose career began in the mid-1900s. The exhibit was put on with the help of the Frankenthaler Foundation, which aims to share the artist’s work and the art of printmaking with various institutions, according to Hannah Cerne, a UNM art history graduate student and curatorial assistant for “Push and Pull.”

The Frankenthaler Foundation allows museums to absorb prints into their collections, Cerne said, and the UNM Art Museum received multiple Frankenthaler prints — which ultimately led to the creation of “Push and Pull.”

Frankenthaler primarily worked out of New York. While she was initially a painter, she moved to abstract printmaking with a focus on bold, dynamic mark-making.

“Her work was unabashedly oversized, bold, and highly physical … She sat on the floor, worked from all directions, and used her fingers to guide the paint,” a placard at the exhibit reads. “The physicality of this approach and her innovative use of materials made her a pioneer whose contributions were not fully recognized until later.”

The exhibit featured many of Frankenthaler’s works, including “Bronze Smoke” and the “What Red Lines Can Do” series, as well as works by her contemporaries, such as “Taurus” by Southwestern printmaker Elaine de Kooning and a piece from Jackson Pollock.

The postwar abstraction movement, of which Frankenthaler was a hallmark, was an artistic period after World War II that favored movement, color and mark over direct representation.

“A lot of people were kind of thinking differently about life. And you see artists kind of really push back against traditional art making, and they’re trying to think of new ways to view the world and to create art,” Cerne said. “So you see abstract art just pushing against all traditional values.”

Cerne took a class about postwar abstraction taught by UNM Art Museum curator Angel Jiang.

“That class helped put the exhibition together in writing labels for the artworks on display, as well as just serving to be a kind of embodiment and re-envisionment of Frankenthaler and her works she recently passed,” Cerne said.

Alongside canonical abstract printmakers, the gallery featured three student works: “Tissues” by Adrian Ricca Lucci, “River Rock/Stream” by Brianna Tadeo and “Concrete and Plywood” by Yoma Wilson.

Adam Berman, the printmaking lab manager for UNM, attended the exhibit’s opening reception Jan. 31. There, he spoke about the power of Frankenthaler’s work to be evocative, while not representational.