BRUNSWICK, Maine – Born a mere three years apart, both Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) and Jo Sandman (b. 1931-) received their artistic training during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. The exhibition Helen Frankenthaler and Jo Sandman: Without Limits will be on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art through March 15. Co-curated by recent Bowdoin College graduate Elisha Osemobor and Co-Director Anne Collins Goodyear, it explores what can be learned by juxtaposing the work of these two pioneering artists.

Both hail from the Northeastern part of the United States, New York in Frankenthaler’s case and a close suburb of Boston in Sandman’s. Both also grew up in close-knit families and were privy to rigorous liberal arts educations that shaped them in important ways, Frankenthaler having attended Bennington, and Jo Sandman, Brandeis. Each received training from the celebrated artist Hans Hofmann, well-known for his articulation of a push-pull relationship between color and form. Sandman would also train with Robert Motherwell, who would later become Frankenthaler’s husband.

While Frankenthaler and Sandman were not personally acquainted, with Frankenthaler building her career from a base in New York City and Sandman ultimately settling near Boston, the artists are linked in their determination to forge new creative pathways, breaking away from Abstract Expressionism and moving into revolutionary styles of art. Frankenthaler, while never abandoning painting, embraced printmaking, and Sandman turned toward process and conceptualism. Both artists pushed beyond the constraints of painting, not abandoning the medium, but advancing into exciting experimentation. Both came to recognize, although by employing different strategies, the exciting potentiality in redefining the relationship between pigment, mark and surface in works of art. Together, the two artists mutually reveal the radicality of the experimentation that each pursued.

Drawn from recent gifts by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and the artist Jo Sandman, the show features 10 editioned prints and eight related proofs donated by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation as part of their Frankenthaler Prints Initiative for university-affiliated museums, highlighting the artist’s experimentation with screen printing, lithography, etching and Mixografia. Nine works given by Sandman showcase her innovative folded fabric drawings, collages and mixed media pieces.

Visit the website of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and see its dedicated page for Helen Frankenthaler and Jo Sandman: Without Limits.