Inside Painting is a series of five special guided tours led in tandem by a museum educator and an experienced painting restorer, a pathway to discover Helen Frankenthaler’s art through insights into her experimentation with different painting techniques.
During a lecture Frankenthaler said: “I use everything. I use big hardware brushes. I use palette knives. I often go to a good hardware shop or grocery shop and get things for five or ten cents. […] I use a lot of sponges, sponges on sticks, floor sponges, wipers. And sometimes, a nice sable brush […] a chamois glove and my hand, depending on the idea and what the painting seems to need, so that you learn a lot by looking at it and letting it speak”.
Experimentation with ever new materials and the aesthetic possibilities of painting are the defining characteristics of Helen Frankenthaler’s artistic research. The invention of the soak-stain technique, the choice to work on unprepared canvases and the abandonment of oil paint in favour of acrylic, which allows for special colour effects, are some of the themes that will be addressed during the tour.
The visit to the exhibition will be rounded off with an experience in the Maria Manetti Shrem Educational Centre in Palazzo Strozzi, where the use of oil paint and acrylics on canvas (prepared and unprepared) will be illustrated along with some special tools for handling paint, simulating some of Frankenthaler’s techniques. The Inside the Painting project is realised with the collaboration of Bartolomeo Ciccone, an expert restorer of painting techniques.
Free visit with exhibition ticket.
Activity in Italian only.
Reservation required.
Reservation office
CSC Sigma
From Monday to Friday
9.00-18.00
Tel. +39 055 26 45 155
prenotazioni@palazzostrozzi.org
Inside Painting
Realization and artistic consulting: Bartolomeo Ciccone
Concept and coordination: Martino Margheri, Matthias Favarato
Thanks to: Sara Fontanini
Video: The Factory prd.
Bartolomeo Ciccone was born in Florence in 1982. After training at the State Institute of Art in Porta Romana, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure and the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, he started his professional activity mainly dedicated to the restoration of mural paintings, alternating it with various activities related to the visual arts and contemporary art in general. He has worked on works by Alessio Baldovinetti, Beato Angelico, Antonio and Piero del Pollaiolo, Michelangelo. Since 2018, he has been a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples for the subject ‘Restoration of contemporary mural painting’, working on works by Michal Rovner and David Tremlett.
Cover: Helen Frankenthaler, Tutti-Frutti (det.), 1966, Buffalo, Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr. 1976, K1976:8 © 2024 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome
