From the international fight against fascism to protecting the proletariat, El Taller de Gráfica Popular (the Workshop for Popular Graphics, or TGP for short) worked diligently to keep pertinent issues before the populace of Mexico and the world. Covering the period from the TGP’s predecessor, the LEAR (the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists), through the most active years of the workshop, the exhibition of approximately 250 works presents an extensive collection of large-scale posters (carteles), small flyers (volantes), books and pamphlets, powerful fine art portfolios and calavera newspapers that exemplifies TGP’s lasting contributions to the Mexican printmaking tradition. The TGP used art to inspire and inform in a country where literacy and communication technology were not widespread. Images of revolution, resistance and unity were often paired with anti-Nazi and anti-fascist messages and printed on the economical, easily distributed volantes and the larger, more visible carteles.

Remarkably prolific, the TGP produced works in a wide variety of media, specializing in linoleum prints and woodcuts. From Raúl Anguiano to Alfredo Zalce, workshop membership included many notable 20th-century Mexican printmakers. The workshop also instructed students from other countries in the techniques of printing and printmaking. During the New Deal era in the United States, some Works Progress Administration artists collaborated on projects with the TGP. Several years later, during the U.S. civil rights movement, Chicano and African American artists such as Elizabeth Catlett would produce work there as well. The proliferation of television and radio in Mexican homes, along with a more stable political environment, eventually made the use of carteles and volantes for disseminating information unnecessary, and the workshop’s productivity slowed. The TGP will always be remembered, however, as a distinct part of Mexican history, when art put social and political issues before the people and brought them to life. The accompanying catalogue, which will contain extensive scholarship and images, will be one of the very first authoritative texts in English on the workshop.

Already from the later 17th century it was documented that Rembrandt occasionaly printed his etching plates on oriental paper. In the 18th century his plates were re-printed on oriental paper, as well as contemporary artists printing their copies after Rembrandt or their own etchings in the style of Rembrandt on oriental paper. The actual paper of early states of Rembrandt prints on oriental paper has been researched only twice, by George Biörklund in 1968 and Jacobus van Breda in 1997. A Japanese team, cooperating with staff from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, entered on an ambitious project researching the oriental papers in dozen of Rembrandt etchings from the collection of the Rijksmuseum in 2014. Their aim is to disclose the (Japanese) region(s) where Rembrandt's oriental paper was made. A final scientific report is expected in 2018. The present exhibition places this project in its larger historical context, giving an overview of the use of oriental (mainly Japanese) paper by European merchants, clergy and artists from the 1590s to c.1670, the emphasis being on Rembrandt's etchings, with further works by contemporaries on oriental paper. The exhibition includes a short history of the invention and dissemination of papermaking, basic information on present manual papermaking in Japan, and an introduction to the Japanese-Dutch research project.

This exhibition documents the contemporary representation of Versailles through an array of prints, books, maps, medals, and manuscripts. It highlights in particular those elements that today survive only on paper: ephemeral festivals; short-lived creatures (courtiers, animals, flowers); fragile groves and fountains too costly to maintain; and once celebrated masterpieces of art and architecture that were irrevocably destroyed or altered. The 'paper Versailles' is quite different from the one that millions of tourists visit every year and affords many unusual and surprising glimpses into a largely lost world.

About 1474 something never seen in print before rolled off the press: the English language. William Caxton, an English merchant and diplomat, had recently learned of the new technology of print invented by Johann Gutenberg twenty years before, and Caxton capitalized on the commercial opportunity offered by this revolutionary invention. William Caxton and the Birth of English Printing celebrates this foundational moment in the history of English literature and language. Caxton published key works of English literature, such as Chaucer and Malory, as well as short religious and didactic texts, many of which he translated from French or Latin. Through his publishing activity, Caxton also helped to stabilize the English language by promoting a single dialect, and through print this dialect became more prevalent and helped to form the basis of our modern language.

As artifacts of nationalistic importance, Caxton imprints have been choice prizes for collectors since the 18th century. Pierpont Morgan favored Caxton over Gutenberg as a founder of printing and strove to acquire a premiere collection of his work. The Morgan has the third largest collection of Caxtons in the world, preserved for their literary, linguistic, and historical significance.

The University of Louisville is proud to announce, The Beauty of a Block: Women Printmakers of the WPA Era, an exhibition highlighting 19 women artists who were employed in the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project during the 1930s and 1940s. The selected prints are drawn from the Hite Art Institute’s expansive print and drawing collection, which holds over 4000 prints from artists around the world. Since the 1930s over 100 exhibitions have been curated from this collection, but this exhibit will be the first to focus solely on a group of women artists.

Curated by students Megan Bogard-Gettelfinger, Whitney Mashburn, Jessica Oberdick, Elizabeth Smith and Leanna Smith in the Critical and Curatorial Practice Seminar, this exhibition grew from expansive research into these selected artists, which revealed strong professional and personal networks -- an aspect accentuated in the exhibition through the display of personal artifacts and letters. The selected prints have been chosen to encompass a wide variety of mediums and subject matter, and emphasis was placed on imagery focused on workers, families, landscapes, and the industrial growth of America during the 30s and 40s. The resulting display includes artists’ working in a variety of print media including woodcuts, lithography, and serigraphy, and imagery depicting race, gender, and societal roles.

The Beauty of a Block will be installed in the Schneider Hall Galleries on the University of Louisville’s Belknap Campus from May 29-July 17, 2015, with an opening reception on May 29 from 5-7 p.m.

Pace Prints is pleased to present an exhibition of new etchings by Dan Walsh at its 32 East 57th Street gallery. The exhibition will be on view May 15—June 27, with an opening reception Thursday, May 14, 6-8pm.

In Folio C, his new suite of five etchings, Walsh continues his exploration of system-based image making through the use of linear pattern. Taking full advantage of the experimental nature of the printmaking medium, the artist allows process to guide the work into new and unexpected terrain.

Walsh creates a wide range of depth in the series, from the tightly-rendered aquatint of Plate I to the spit-bitten, atmospheric blues in Plate III. As in his paintings, Walsh works in response to his marks as they develop on the copperplate, following or diverging from their prescribed paths, in order to create these colorful and iconic geometries.

Née en 1967 à Leipzig, Christiane Baumgartner compte parmi les personnalités majeures de la gravure contemporaine. Après s’être consacrée exclusivement à la xylographie, elle renoue désormais avec des pratiques telles que le dessin et l’eau-forte. Cette nouvelle orientation met notamment en question son goût pour les formats monumentaux, caractéristiques de sa production de ces dix dernières années. La majorité de ses œuvres ont pour base une image vidéo ou photographique qu’elle retravaille sur ordinateur pour la transférer ensuite en xylographie ou, comme récemment, en photogravure. La tension née de la rencontre d’une vision contemporaine et d’une technique traditionnelle radicalise la position de l’artiste vis-à-vis des attentes du spectateur. L’exposition est organisée en collaboration avec l’artiste, le Centre de la gravure et de l’image imprimée à La Louvière et le Museum Kunstpalast à Düsseldorf.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) was the first Japanese artist to be internationally recognized, and he continues to inspire artists around the world. As the home of the largest and finest collection of Japanese art outside Japan—including the greatest variety of Hokusai works in any museum—the MFA is uniquely positioned to offer a comprehensive exhibition of this remarkable artist. Drawing from extensive holdings of paintings, woodblock prints, and illustrated printed books, the Museum will showcase an array of works from Hokusai’s seven-decade career, including lesser-known pieces depicting whimsical instructions on how to draw, dynamic paintings on paper lanterns, and elaborate cut-out dioramas. Also displayed are some of the most famous images in Japanese art, including Under the Wave Off Kanagawa (Great Wave) (about 1830–31)—from the legendary series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji—and the brilliantly colored multi-panel screen painting Phoenix (1835). Spanning Hokusai’s work from his 20s through his 80s, the exhibition will explore common themes through sections dedicated to topics such as landscapes, nature, fantasy, and the “Floating World” of urban culture (including depictions of the Kabuki theater and the Yoshiwara pleasure district). Works that depict Japanese historical and literary motifs will be featured along with “perspective prints” with exaggerated vanishing points, often used in toy peep shows. An extremely delicate silk square of a mythological Chinese lion, likely used as a gift wrapper (fukusa), will also be included, in a rare public display of the fragile work. An illustrated publication will accompany the exhibition.

Machine Age Modernism, a special presentation of prints from the Daniel Cowin Collection, captures the tumultuous aesthetic and political climate of the years before, during, and after World Wars I and II in Britain. Today known as the Machine Age, this was an era that embraced industry and mechanization. New modes of communication and transportation infused with the aura of speed and efficiency—radios, trains, automobiles, airplanes—transformed the landscape of the country.

This exhibition features a wide range of vanguard imagery produced during the period, including themes such as cityscapes, war, industrial technology, rural farming, sport, and leisure activity. During World War I, two British printmakers, Edward Wadsworth and C. R. W. Nevinson, depicted Britain’s military efforts, portraying soldiers at the front, war ships, and manufacturing projects in support of the war effort. In the following decades, another group of artists began to explore their changing world with a new medium, the linocut. Students at the progressive Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London learned to make prints from common linoleum flooring. Sybil Andrews, Claude Flight, Lill Tschudi, and others made technically experimental prints whose vibrant colors and geometric forms bridged abstraction and representation. They chose to embrace craft-like execution that encouraged simplicity. The works featured in this exhibition are filled with the energy and excitement of the Machine Age and exemplify how artists found inspiration in the modern world.

All works in the exhibition are from the Daniel Cowin Collection.