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Tamarind: Forty Years

October 11, 2002 - January 5, 2003

 

The Toledo Museum of Art proudly presents Tamarind: Forty Years October 11, 2002 through January 5, 2003. Tamarind: Forty Years represents the 40-year history of Tamarind Press and the extraordinary, expressive potential of lithography. From its beginnings in 1960 as the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles to its continuation as the Tamarind Institute in New Mexico, it became the major place for artists to explore the range and vitality of lithography as an art form.

Lithography was invented by Aloys Senefelder over 200 years ago as a way to print sheet music quickly and cheaply. In the process of lithography, artists draw on a chemically treated piece of limestone or a metal plate made of either aluminum or zinc. The artist then uses a greasy drawing ink and creates a reverse image on the plate just as if he or she was drawing on paper. Print paper is placed on top of the inked plate or stone and cranked by hand through a press transferring the image to the paper. (left: David Hare, Elephants in Violets, 1987, The Tamarind Archive Collection, The University of New Mexico Art Museum)

From its inception, Tamarind has had multiple goals -- to encourage artists, working in many styles, to explore the potential of lithography; to train master printers who can facilitate that artistic exploration; to accustom artists and printers to working in close collaboration; and to encourage both to experiment in order to refine and expand the expressive possibilities of lithography. Tamarind's success as an arena of exploration for artists and printers, and as a training ground for printers may be seen in this exhibition created during Tamarind's fruitful 40-year history.

This exhibition presents 63 prints made over the past 40 years created in Tamarind's exceptional atmosphere of collaboration and experimentation to explore the potential of lithography. Major artists such as Josef Albers, Louise Nevelson, Philip Pearlstein, Juan Sanchez, Emmi Whitehorse, and Donald Sultan are included in the exhibition, which celebrates the incredible diversity of American art over the last half-century. (left: Robert De Niro, Untitled (VIII) from Moroccan Suite, 1974, The Tamarind Archive Collection, The University of New Mexico Art Museum)

A 206-page, full-color, soft-cover catalogue of the exhibition will be available at The Museum Store.

Tamarind: Forty Years was organized by the University of New Mexico Art Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by Kathleen Howe, Curator of Prints and Photographs, in association with Marjorie Devon, Director of the Tamarind Institute, and is traveling under the auspices of TREX: the Traveling Exhibitions Program of the Museum of New Mexico.

 

Following is wall text from the exhibition:


Tamarind at Forty: An Anniversary Retrospective
 
Tamarind at Forty: An Anniversary Retrospective, organized by the University of New Mexico Art Museum, is a major traveling exhibition of lithographs from Tamarind.
 
From its beginnings in 1960 as the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, to its continuation as Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico, Tamarind's founders and their successors have devoted themselves to "the stimulation and preservation of the art of lithography."
 
This exhibition presents 63 prints made in forty years during which artists and printers came together in Tamarind's exceptional atmosphere of collaboration and experimentation to explore the potential of lithography. Represented are a few of the more than 1000 artists who have worked at Tamarind; equally important is the representation of master printers who trained and printed at Tamarind.
 
From its inception, Tamarind has had multiple goals -- to encourage artists, working in many styles, to explore the potential of lithography; to train master printers who can facilitate that artistic exploration; to accustom artists and printers to working in close collaboration; and to encourage both to experiment in order to refine and expand the expressive possibilities of lithography. Less attention has been paid to another of Tamarind's goals, articulated by founder June Wayne, "to restore the prestige of lithography by creating a collection of extraordinary lithographs." Tamarind's success as an arena of exploration for artists and printers, and as a training ground for printers may be seen in this exhibition -- "a collection of extraordinary lithographs" created during Tamarind's fruitful forty-year history.

Readers may wish to also follow a link in the "history" section on the "about us" page of the Tamarind Institute at http://www.unm.edu/~tamarind/aboutus.html to an essay named "An Informed Energy: Lithography and Tamarind" by Clinton Adams, concerning the history of the Tamarind Institute.

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