Elaine de Kooning (American, 1918–89), collaborating printers John Sommers and Marlys Dietrick, Jardin de Luxembourg I from Suite Fifteen, 1977. Eight-color lithograph. Published by Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, est. 1970. The Tamarind Archive Collection, 77.248.1.

Drawing on the UNM Art Museum’s permanent collection, Push & Pull: The Prints of Helen Frankenthaler and Her Contemporaries celebrates abstraction in all print processes. 

Learn more about Elaine de Kooning’s Jardin de Luxembourg series by listening to the following sound piece created and recorded by Kayliegh Begay, a UNM undergraduate student in Art Studio. 

Transcript:

Elaine de Kooning was a well-known painter, but don’t forget she was a printmaker too. Between 1958 – 1959 Elaine worked at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She was asked to participate at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico as a collaborating artist.

The Tamarind Institute focuses on lithography printmaking. Lithography is a process that uses a limestone and oily materials that are absorbed by the stone.

Elaine de Kooning manipulated the touché washes and solvent based inks to create the painterly imagery. The gestural and organic imagery in her prints captures movement and action. In the print Jardin de Luxemborg 1 the freedom of flow throughout her imagery is eye-catching. The print was made with eight different colors – that means eight different stones.

The print has round and curvy edges of five figures. The grey hues that are shown throughout have a nice contrast against the green leaves that are in the foreground. From a distance the print looks like a garden with boulders.