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Looking Back on the New York Graphic Workshop, 1964 –1970

This panel will consider the work and legacy of the New York Graphic Workshop (NYGW), a printmaking collective operative from 1964 to 1970. Together, printmakers Luis Camnitzer (b. 1937), José Guillermo Castillo (1938–99), and Liliana Porter (b. 1941) devoted themselves to producing conceptual pieces indebted to printmaking and its labor-intensive processes. Even as they were committed to traditional methods, the NYGW often bent lithography, etching, and engraving away from their conventions, toward new questions, problems, and ideas. As Camnitzer stated in 1966: “We are printmakers conditioned but not destroyed by our techniques.”

In dialogue with curator and independent scholar Ursula Davila-Villa, Camnitzer and Porter will discuss artworks they produced while part of the NYGW. Examining both independent pieces and collaborations, Camnitzer, Davila-Villa, and Porter will draw viewers into the complex ideas these artists conveyed through print, and the ways they exploited the medium’s unique contingencies. The conversation will focus on the role printmaking played in the NYGW’s self-conception – particularly the crucial implications of “the multiple” which were foundational to the group’s interventions. Attendees will learn more about an influential and significant chapter in American and Latin American conceptual art, as well as the under-acknowledged contributions of print within these histories.

For more information and to register for this virtual event please visit the external link below.

Relevant research areas: North America, South America, 20th Century
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