Proof: The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California

Edited by Leah Lehmbeck

Extensively illustrated and with essays by both established print scholars and new voices, this volume introduces the printmaking pioneers who nurtured an environment suitable for the founding of the country's most significant print shop and addresses the spectacular spread of printmaking from its modern beginnings in Southern California within the larger narrative of postwar American art. In the 1950s, the print world in Los Angeles was small but active. It was made of artists, educators, collectors, and curators whose collaboration led to the triumphant founding of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop led by June Wayne in 1960. The first goal of the workshop was to create a pool of master artisan-printers in the United States to revive the medium of fine art lithography. The story goes on to include two other major workshops—Gemini G.E.L. and Cirrus Editions—plus artists working independently and the academic printmaking community.

Drawing mainly on the extensive print collection of the Norton Simon Museum, the book includes works by the local founders of the movement such as John Altoon, Garo Antreasian, Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Ed Moses, Ken Price, Ed Ruscha, and June Wayne as well as by artists who traveled west to print in Los Angeles such as Joseph Albers, Bruce Conner, Lee Mullican, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, and Robert Rauschenberg. An accompanying exhibition, part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative, was on view at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena from October 1, 2011, through April 2, 2012.

Leah Lehmbeck is associate curator at the Norton Simon Museum.

“Lehmbeck has assembled a group of expert authors who together create a groundbreaking portrait of a dynamic period and place, and to some extent rewrite the accepted histories of 20^th-century art.”
—Art in Print

“[This book] will be a valuable addition for libraries with art historical collections that emphasize printmaking.”
—Choice

256 pages
9 x 12 inches
200 color illustrations
ISBN 978-1-60606-093-3
hardcover

Getty Publications
Imprint: Norton Simon Museum

2011