As early as the fifteenth century, print media in the Western world was intended as a form of affordable popular art, perpetuated by a wider distribution of art to multiple recipients. Because of these developments, a person who might not have been able to afford an oil painting or original drawing could still own an original work of art. Since that time artists have experimented with a great variety of printmaking processes. Among these are relief printing as in woodcuts, linocuts or wood engravings where the resulting image is created by cutting away undesired areas of a block and applying ink to the raised surface which is then printed. Another is the intaglio process of line engraving where only the incised furrows of a metal plate are filled with ink in order to form the printed image. A third method is a surface or planographic printing process such as lithography. A lithograph is printed from a flat stone or metal plate on which the artist draws with oil based pigments that leave a residue to which the ink binds. From these basic approaches have evolved many variations and mixed methods, devised by the innovative collaborative work of artists and master printers. The monotype, which is featured in many of the works shown in this exhibition, is a variation on the surface process where paper is applied to a design painted on a glass, stone, or metal plate. The result is a single edition print, thus breaking from the idea of the print being reproducible. 

Through the efforts of Dr. Robert and Mrs. Sharon Yoerg, the Haggerty Museum of Art is the recipient of a collection of approximately fifty artists' prints produced at Smith Andersen Editions in Palo Alto, California under the direction of Paula Kirkeby and a staff of professional printers. The gifts began in 1993 and are continuing through the present. The collection represents the collectorsí intense and informed interest in printmaking, and a unique collaboration between the collectors and the press at Smith Andersen. 
 

© 2000 Marquette University