Abstract Thinking
Association (BADA), is proud to present a new and vibrant exhibition, Abstract Thinking: Fanchon Fröhlich and Her Contemporaries, at The Victoria Gallery and Museum. It features the work of this fascinating Liverpool artist shown alongside that of internationally-known artists of the 20th century such as Gillian Ayres, Sandra Blow, Peter Lanyon and William Hayter, plus other leading artists based in the city.
Fanchon Frohlich (1927 – 2016) was a remarkable artist and intellectual. She enjoyed success in the 1960s, when her prints were exhibited in Paris alongside works by Joan Miró and purchased by the Walker Art Gallery, and her academic theories published by the avant-garde Situationist International. However, from the 1980s onwards, Fanchon’s work began to be overlooked. This exhibition seeks to re-establish Fanchon’s position in the artworld by displaying her paintings and prints alongside those of artists from the University of Liverpool’s art collection whose work is in a similar abstract style. Most were personal friends of Fanchon and the mutual flow of ideas and influences can be seen.
Fanchon was born in Iowa, USA, and studied the Philosophy of Science at the University of Chicago. While visiting Liverpool in 1949 she met the eminent physicist Herbert Fröhlich who had just taken up a senior position at the University of Liverpool. They married the following year. Fanchon studied for a degree in linguistic philosophy at the University of Oxford then, in a major career change, undertook a post-graduate qualification at Liverpool College of Art in the mid-1950s. Her teachers there included George Mayer-Marton, Arthur Ballard and Austin Davies who are represented in the exhibition.
As an artist, Fanchon worked in a strongly gestural, spontaneous style allied to the New York school of Abstract Expressionism. During the late 1950s she worked in St Ives alongside Peter Lanyon and then in Paris with print-maker William Hayter amongst many others. In Liverpool in the late 1980s Fanchon embarked on communally produced artworks she called Collective Phenomena, where multiple artists worked on a single painting in a session
accompanied by composer Lawrence Ball on keyboards. Her friendship with Liverpool-based artist Terry Duffy was also a source of artistic inspiration. A major work of his, ‘The Miraculous draft of Fishes’, exhibited in the 1991 John Moores Painting Prize, is displayed in the exhibition.

