In cooperation with the National Museum Oslo, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart presents exceptional works of American printmaking from 1960 to 1990.
In the past, printmaking served primarily to make religious or political content accessible to a broad public and was an important means of communication. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was primarily the German Expressionists who devoted themselves massively to this technique. At the end of the 1950s, the USA also experienced a real "graphic boom".
At this time, the most important artists of the American avant-garde, represented by Abstract Expressionism, Hard Edge, Pop Art, Minimal Art and other styles, began to work or experiment with a wide variety of printing techniques. Publishers specializing in prints, such as Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) in New York, founded in 1957 by Tatyana Grosman, or GEMINI G.E.L (Graphic Editions Limited) in Los Angeles, which has existed since 1966, played a special role in this, especially in their high standards of printmaking.
Single sheets, portfolios and artists' books were produced in large numbers. In particular, the artists of Pop Art were responding to industrial mass production as well as the marketing of the media. Most of the artists had already established themselves as painters.
In the preferred media of lithography, such as silkscreen, but also in other printing techniques, they created independent art forms, with which they followed in the footsteps of the pioneers of modern graphic art such as Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch and Pablo Picasso.
With around 170 prints, the exhibition presents an impressive range of the most diverse styles and forms of American printmaking and its establishment as an independent art form.
Under the patronage of James W. Hermann, III, U.S. Consul General Frankfurt.