Artist Helen Frankenthaler is best known for her pioneering paintings, in which she developed the “soak-stain” method of pouring diluted paint onto unprimed canvases. Yet Frankenthaler was also a prolific printmaker, applying the same curiosity and sensitivity to her experimentation with various techniques. Yellow Span, seen here, is the first etching Frankenthaler ever made. She was initially wary of the medium, remarking that “I didn’t like the idea of the sharp needle scratching into hard metal.” With the guidance of master printer Donn Steward, however, she chose the sugar-lift aquatint method, which enabled her to create washes by painting on the etching plate with a viscous sugar solution. Yellow Span evokes a landscape, but it is not entirely representational. Instead, Frankenthaler preferred “to use nature but then to dismiss it.”