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Entering the Mainstream
Luis Jimenez
The term lithography comes from the Greek, lithos "stone" and grapho "to
write", thus "to write on stone". The process of "chemical printing"
(as the inventor called it) is just that: "writing (drawing) on stone".
Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in Austria in 1798 and
patented as a printing medium in 1799. Originally devised by Senefelder
as a process for printing theater scripts, it saw dramatic investigation
and innovation in the early 19th century as both a commercial printing
process and as a means for artists to print directly from their drawings
to make limited edition prints. As the process was refined by the
printing industry, most notably through the invention of offset
lithography by Ira Washington Rubel in 1903 (the most common commercial
printing process used today), the popularity of stone lithography faded.
Certainly there were artists printing their own work, both in the US and
abroad, but the availability of master printers who aided artists in
producing lithographs declined dramatically.
The renaissance of stone lithography in the 20th century in America can
clearly be attributed to artist June Wayne (represented in this
exhibition) who in 1960 founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Inc.
in Los Angeles through funding from the Ford Foundation. Her
persuasive proposal to the Ford Foundation sought to "rescue" an
important artistic process by training a new generation of master
printers to collaborate with interested artists and to train artists to
maximize the creative potential of lithography. The workshop's
definitive text on lithography, The Tamarind Book of Lithography:
Art &
Technique, by Clinton Adams and Garo Antreasian catapulted their
efforts
to an international audience and became the bible for artists and art
school programs interested in lithography. Following a decade of success
and three Ford Foundation grants, the program moved to the University of
New Mexico where it became the Tamarind Institute of Lithography under
the direction of the authors of the text, Adams as Director and
Antreasian as Technical Director.
With the supply of lithographic stones (particularly large ones)
diminishing and the costs of stones increasing due to the new demand and
limited supply, master printers began to look at industry's use of metal
plates as a substitute. Of the many metals tried, aluminum plates
emerged as the preferred substitute. Pre-grained and relatively
inexpensive, these plates offered all the versatility of stone with only
minimal variations in preparation and printing methods. As a result, it
became substantially less expensive for master printers, artists and art
schools to establish lithographic studios.
The effect of well-trained master printers setting up commercial
workshops and art school programs in lithography was dramatic in the
1970s and 1980s. As even more technical and critical books were
published on the subject, lithography and the prints produced piqued the
interest of more art schools, artists, dealers, museums and collectors
in the US and abroad. The net result created an explosion of interest
and a renaissance in the fine art of lithography.
The University of Arizona Museum of Art is fortunate to have an
extraordinary international collection of lithographs from the 20th
century. This exhibition was developed to showcase the range and
diversity of creative possibilities in lithography from the pre-war era
to the explosive expansion of interest in the medium after 1960 when
lithography entered the mainstream as an exciting medium for
contemporary artistic expression
Visit our Exhibition History page for information
on past exhibitions at UAMA.
UAMA: (520) 621-7567
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