Kenneth Tyler: Thirty Years of Printmaking

Lyman Allyn Art Museum

Connecticut College

New London, CT

860-443-2545

Kenneth Tyler: Thirty Years of Printmaking

Lyman Allyn Museum of Art at Connecticut College announces a new exhibition, Kenneth Tyler: Thirty Years of Printmaking, opening to the public on Friday, September 29, and on view through November 26, 2000.

The exhibition Kenneth Tyler: Thirty Years of Printmaking is presented as a series of interconnecting retrospectives focusing on the influential artists who have worked with Kenneth Tyler at Tyler Graphics. Kenneth Tyler is a major figure in the explosion of American printmaking that has taken place over the past thirty years. Having trained at the famous Tamarind Workshop, Tyler went out on his own in 1965, setting up Gemini Ltd, which soon metamorphosed into Gemini GEL, with Tyler at the helm as the master printer. Then in 1974, Tyler moved to New York City, an independent printmaker again, this time with the wealth of printmaking knowledge he had acquired over the previous decade. Having regrouped geographically, and as bold and inventive as ever, Tyler continued to work with his long-time artist collaborators: Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Kenneth Noland, Josef Albers, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, and Claes Oldenburg, (left: Roy Lichenstein, Reflections on Crash, from "Reflection Series," 1990)

Kenneth Tyler works differently with each artist and the exhibition emphasizes the diversity of these collaborations. His work with the Bauhaus-trained Josef Albers required exacting, up-to-date methods to produce crisp edges and modulated tonal values. In contrast, the filmy overlapping colors in Helen Frankenthaler's 1997 woodcuts were produced by traditional Ukiyoe techniques. Tyler's ongoing and most innovative collaboration has been with Frank Stella, and the exhibition documents the distance Stella has traveled - from his small 1967 Black Series lithographs to the more recent, large and complex multi-media prints such as Talledaga Three I.

Kenneth Tyler: Thirty Years of Printmaking demonstrates the history of collaborative printmaking and its various components: papermaking, illustrated books, and large-scale multi-media prints. A case study showing one print at different stages illustrates the variety of techniques and processes to the viewer.

Kenneth Tyler: Thirty Years of Printmaking, curated by Judith Goldman, is organized by Tyler Graphics Ltd. and Curatorial Assistance and is circulated by Curatorial Assistance, Los Angeles.

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This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information. rev. 3/23/11

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