Helen FRANKENTHALER

The present sheet is drawn on handmade paper supplied to Frankenthaler by the Swiss papermaker Fred Siegenthaler (b.1935), who also is likely to have been the recipient of the drawing as a present from the artist in 1991. Trained first in Switzerland and later in Munich, Siegenthaler worked as a paper engineer for the pharmaceutical company Sandoz AG, conducting research into producing paper products using various raw materials. He travelled extensively, living for long periods in South and North America and Asia, while at the same time researching paper history, collecting rare papers and working as a paper artist. In 1967 Siegenthaler opened a small workshop producing handmade papers, and by the 1970s he was working closely with a number of artists, providing handmade custom papers to Frankenthaler, as well as Horst Antes, Jasper Johns, Marisol, Joan Miró, Claes Oldenburg and Meret Oppenheim, among others. In 1986 Siegenthaler established the International Association of Paper Artists and Papermakers.

Sieganthaler's most significant work was the publication, in 1987, of Strange Papers: A Collection of the World’s Rarest Handmade Papers. Sourced from around the world, the paper samples in the book included many made from exotic raw materials not usually associated with papermaking, such as asparagus rinds, carrots, leather, corn husks, feathers, various grasses, silk, hemp, stinging nettles and tree fibres. The book Strange Papers, which weighed some twenty-two pounds, was published in a limited edition of two hundred copies, and is only found today in such institutions as the New York Public Library. 

As the inscription on the typewritten label attached to the old backing board notes, the present sheet was drawn on a sample of paper No. 34.1 from Strange Papers, identified therein as ‘Dyed Manilla Blend Paper’.


Gouache, watercolour and coloured chalks (with oil?) on handmade paper.