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British
Printmaking during The late 1950s and the 1960s were an inspirational period in British printmaking. The collapse of the etching market in the 1930s and the onset of war had completely interrupted the development of printmaking in Britain, with a few significant exceptions. This began to change when Robert Erskine, a young Cambridge graduate, opened the St George's Gallery in Cork Street, London, in 1955, and started to spearhead a rapid expansion in British printmaking. He commissioned, bought, exhibited, and promoted the work of British artists; he began to publish suites of prints by artists and instituted annual exhibitions of contemporary British printmakers. Erskine encouraged a young British artist, Stanley Jones, to study the art of lithography in Paris; and when Jones returned to England in the late 1950s he brought with him a skill and dedication to printing which had always survived in Paris, but which had been lost in England since the time of Whistler. Stanley Jones became a printer at Curwen Press when Curwen set up a studio for printing editions of artists' lithographs in 1958. In 1960 Editions Alecto was set up in London, and within a short time Robert Erskine became one of the directors. Alecto in turn was involved in setting up the Print Centre, an exhibition space off Church Street, Kensington. This became the principal London exhibition venue for British and foreign prints, attracting such artists as Allen Jones, Alan Davie, Eduardo Paolozzi, Bernard Cohen, Howard Hodgkin, and artists from Stanley Hayter's Atelier 17 in Paris. Meanwhile Chris Prater had set up as an independent screenprinter in 1957, and by the early 1960s his imprint, Kelpra, had begun to act as a catalyst for young artists such as Richard Hamilton, Paolozzi, David Hockney, R. B. Kitaj, and Harold Cohen. A number of galleries began to commission and publish prints, and soon Kelpra was printing editions for Alecto, Marlborough Fine Art (whose artists included Sidney Nolan and Victore Pasmore) and Waddington. The Scottish Print Studios The momentum created by Alecto, Curwen, Kelpra and Bridgid Skiold's "Printworkshop" in the south was soon followed by developments in Scotland. In 1967 the Printmakers Workshop (now Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop) was established in Edinburgh by a small group of artists, including Philip Reeves. This was the first open-access print workshop in Britain, and soon attracted the financial support of the Scottish Arts Council. Although less commercially oriented than the London studios, Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop followed them in establishing a new culture of shared experimentation and knowledge between artist and artist-printer, in contrast to the continental tradition where artists paid for printing services and rarely worked directly on the presses. During the 1970s the Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop model was followed by artist-run print studios which opened in other Scottish cities - Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Dundee. A network of artist-run print studios now exists throughout Scotland - a feature unique to this country. The larger Scottish studios have comprehensive facilities for etching, lithography, screenprinting, and relief printing; and in addition operate active programmes in print-publishing, gallery and touring exhibitions, and education. As a result a continuous flow of artists from Scotland, England, and overseas, makes use of these facilities, and printmaking is now widely regarded as a major, accessible art form. |
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