The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California (video podcast)
The art world of the late 1950s experienced a groundswell of interest in printmaking that forever changed the artistic landscape of America. By that time, the most avant-garde of artists had become interested in making editioned works on paper with a press, using methods no longer relegated to a select group who defined themselves solely as “printmakers.” Because this development was still in its germinal stages in the 1950s, however, there existed only a handful of places in the country where eager young artists could learn the techniques of printmaking. Academic institutions tended to favor familiar and conventional intaglio methods, drawing on Rembrandt, Goya and Whistler, art history’s most successful artist-printmakers. Lithography and screenprinting, which suited the growing pop and minimal aesthetic as well as the more painterly approaches of expressionism, were harder for artists to adopt. These methods, traditionally used only for commercial printing, were still in their infancy as fine-art techniques. As a result, they were rarely taught in university art programs, and by the late 1950s, there were only three or four studios in the country that could claim success as fine-art lithography printshops, and even fewer for screenprinting.
The Sad Flute Player by June Wayne
Lithograph, 1950
Last Civil War Veteran by Larry Rivers
Color lithograph, published by Universal Limited Art Editions, 1961
sources:
http://www.junewayne.com/
http://www.nortonsimon.org/
http://americanhistory.si.edu/
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