Dorothy Fratt

A revelatory examination of Fratt’s five-decade explorations of color, landscape and abstraction

This is the first major monograph on the prolific yet underrecognized American painter Dorothy Fratt (1923–2017). Born in Washington, DC, and associated with the Washington Color School in the early 1950s, Fratt moved to Arizona in 1958 and forged her own style of abstraction more closely tied to the American Southwest. Although Fratt’s paintings are often classified as Color Field and Abstract Expressionist, her use of color and rendering of landscape idiosyncratically emotes atmosphere, gesture and mood on her own terms. Spanning five decades of the artist’s oeuvre, Dorothy Fratt includes a selection of foundational early works alongside numerous paintings that exemplify Fratt’s vibrant, distinct style. The book also features a biography, ephemera from Fratt’s life and a conversation with artists Teresa Baker, Caroline Kent and Rebecca Ward.