Past Exhibitions

Ten Workshops

28 March–30 July 2006

Elaine de Kooning Lascaux Series #1

Women artists have been interested in printmaking for generations. This exhibition will feature important prints emanating from the Mount Holyoke College Printmaking Workshop, founded in 1984 and directed by Mount Holyoke professor and printmaker Nancy Campbell. Her intention was to bring highly respected women artists to the campus to serve as an inspiration for her students. She intended, too, to introduce them to the collaborative aspect of printmaking, in which artist and master printer work closely together to complete a work of art.

Elaine de Kooning was the first resident artist in 1984, just after she began working with imagery inspired by prehistoric painting on the walls of caves in southern France. During her residency she completed five lithographs, the Lascaux Series, that remind us of the extraordinary pictographs associated with the foundations of human image making. In 1985 Joan Snyder created the dramatic imagery of Can We Turn Our Rage to Poetry, which contrasts radically with the workshop print of 1986, the small, precise, yet limitless etching Untitled Galaxy by Vija Celmins. Yet another contrast comes from Susan Shatter who depicts romantic expanses of the untamed natural world, panoramic views that earlier inspired painters such as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran.

The formal, iconographic and technical diversity of these prints reflect the intentions of Mount Holyoke’s printmaking workshop. The exhibition will include not only the final prints but also a selection of preparatory drawings and proof states, all selected from the museum’s permanent collection. In addition to the artists mentioned, works by Sondra Freckelton, Jane Dickson, Sue Coe, Aline Feldman, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and Kiki Smith will be included.

Return to list of Past Exhibitions