Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO http://archive.org/details/priguggenOOsolo Prints from the Guggenheim Museum Collection This project is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. a Federal Agency Organized by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Circulated by The American Federation of Arts, New York Preface and Acknowledgements Published by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1978 ISBN: 0-89202-015-3 Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 78-59812 © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1978 More than most modern art museums, the Dubuffet and Josef Albers, where the presence in Guggenheim has, throughout its forty-year exist- our holdings of their important unique works en- ence, consciously and deliberately limited its couraged print collectors with generous impulses scope. Such limits apply to the chronological span toward the Guggenheim Museum to donate of the works it collects, a span, which despite graphics to us. broadening, remains confined to some recent The selection presented here is, therefore, the first approximately the last hundred years. During our effort to isolate, document and exhibit the finest institution's earlier history, limitations were applied examples of prints in the Guggenheim Museum even more rigidly to media. The original Museum collection. The project was carried out by Linda of Non-Objective Painting extended its holdings Konheim, the Guggenheim's Curatorial Adminis- into the realm of three-dimensional art only as trator, who has been concerned with graphics over new policies accommodated such an expansion the years in the absence of a print curator on our and its name was changed to The Solomon R. staff. Miss Konheim also wrote the informative Guggenheim Museum. Works on paper were catalogue texts. She was in turn aided in choosing acquired from the beginning but en passant rather the works by Louise Averill Svendsen, Senior than methodically, and curatorial departmentali- Curator, and Angelica Rudenstine, Research zation, with the inevitable creation of a print Curator. David Rubin, former Summer Fellow at department, has been successfully resisted to the the Museum, did preliminary research for the present day. catalogue. Massumeh Farhad, Tina Gonzalez, There are good structural and economic reasons Dorianne Hutton, Carol Paul, Margaret Poser and for such self-imposed limitations. With effective Ann Schoenfeld, interns, and Philip Verre and departments of prints, industrial design, architec- Clair Zamoiski, Curatorial Coordinators, are to be ture, film and photography at New York's Museum acknowledged for their help in cataloguing the of Modern Art there seems little reason to strain prints or contributing to entries in this publication. our scant resources by committing them to over- Special thanks are due to Carol Fuerstein, Editor, lapping areas within the same community. who edited the catalogue, and Susan Hirschfeld, Moreover, because works in these disciplines are Curatorial Assistant, who saw it through the typically produced in multiples, collecting it would presses and coordinated the exhibition. The result in a needless duplication of objects. Prints, assistance of Saul Fuerstein, Preparator, who therefore, were never systematically collected, but unframed works for viewing and study, Orrin Riley, came into the Guggenheim Museum collection Conservator, and Dana L. Cranmer, Conservation somewhat haphazardly, usually as gifts rather than Assistant, who analyzed the condition of each through curatorial initiative, and then only in work and aided in the determination of media and relatively small numbers. It is remarkable, there- paper type, must also be gratefully acknowledged. fore, that as rewarding a group of prints as the one A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts presented here has nevertheless been brought subsidized the preparation of this publication, together. which serves as a catalogue for the present exhibi- Our print collecting in recent years became more tion and as a selective collection handbook for methodical in areas of particular concentration in our prints. The support of the National Endowment the Museum's holdings. The absence of prints by for the Arts has also enabled the Guggenheim to Vasily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, whose paintings, offer this exhibition to museums and galleries for watercolors and other unique works are a main- a reduced fee. The two-year circulation of the stay of our collection, came to be felt as a distinct presentation was arranged by The American Fed- gap. Kandinsky's graphic production, even more eration of Arts, New York, whose experienced than Klee's, was so important in his oeuvre and handling ensured the show's wide and successful related so meaningfully to his other work in the distribution. Guggenheim collection that special efforts to ob- tain important prints were clearly called for. The same considerations, if not to the same degree, Thomas M. Messer, Director applied to Franz Marc, Frantisek Kupka, Jean The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Introduction Linda Konheim The origins of printing can be traced back to im- nineteenth and early-twentieth century painters pressions made from seals or stamps in ancient and sculptors to make them. In 1 895, Meier- Egypt and China before the era of Christ. Incised Graefe published a portfolio of etchings by Edvard wood blocks were used to print repeated patterns Munch, who produced the earliest prints in the on textiles long before paper was invented. The Guggenheim's collection. Tete a tete (cat. no. 41) earliest impressions on paper are found in China, was included in this first album. Kahnweiler's where paper was invented in the second century patronage gave incentive to Picasso and Braque to A.D. As soon as paper became readily available in make etchings early in their careers. Among the Europe at the end of the fourteenth century, print- works he commissioned from these two artists are making began to flourish there. Woodcuts were Picasso's Two Nude Figures, 1909, and Head of a used not only for book illustrations but for icons for Man, 1912, and Braque's Fox, 1911 (cat. nos. 45, the poor man to worship, souvenirs of pilgrimage 46, 2), all included in this exhibition. Vollard, who shrines, New Year's cards and playing cards. Until was a collector of fashionable engravings before the advent of photography in the mid-nineteenth he became a dealer, fostered a renewal of the art century, handmade prints were used whenever of book illustration. Maintaining his interest in multiples of images were desired. Although print- prints, he commissioned portfolios and books from making was for the most part viewed as a craft to many of his artists and published his first album of be used for the commercial reproduction of pic- lithographs in 1896. Shortly thereafter, he began tures, in the hands of such masters as Durer, Man- to publish fine illustrated books, allowing the tegna, Rembrandt, Callot, Goya and Daumier, artists he selected to choose the literature for graphics were nevertheless high art. which they wished to provide prints. During the later part of the nineteenth century, Illustrative prints play an important role in the his- prints gradually came to be considered a major tory of modern graphics. They provide an ideal artistic medium, and the quality of each individual vehicle for the artist who wishes to explore the in- impression took on new importance. Artists began terplay between the written and visual idioms. The to sign their prints, thereby differentiating original earliest work of this nature in the current presenta- graphics with innate aesthetic value from repro- tion is Kupka's Black Idol of 1902 (cat. no. 28), one ductions. A signature also testifies to the authen- of a number of illustrations this artist executed for ticity of a print and the artist's approval of a Poe's writings. Several other prints in this genre particular proof. Artists created another quality are included in the exhibition. Among them is control by limiting the size of the editions of their Hoffmannesque Scene of 1 921 (cat. no. 27) one of prints and numbering them: if they inscribe the im- the many delightful Klees inspired bythetalesof pression number and the number of the edition on E.T.A. Hoffmann. One of the many illustrative each example, they can influence the price of each graphics Kandinsky executed is also shown here. print in relation to the number of works on the mar- Early in his career this artist began to illustrate his ket and can prevent prints from being pulled after own writings: ten woodcuts appear in his treatise the plate or stone has worn down from excessive On the Spiritual in Art of 1912 and, in 1913, Klange, use. At this time, artists also started to use hand- a bound volume of his poems and woodcuts was made or specially manufactured paper. The high published. He made many graphics while he was quality of these papers contributed to the aesthetic at the Bauhaus, but it was only after 1933, when value of the prints made on them. Kandinsky moved to Paris, that he produced prints As original prints began to assume greater impor- for four works by contemporary authors: a dry- tance, artists were able, through them, to reach a point for 24 essais de Jakovsky and etchings for larger audience than ever before. Because prints Rene Char's Le Marteau sans maitre, Stephen were produced in greater quantities than other art Spender's "Fraternity" and Tristan Tzara's La forms, they could be distributed widely and at com- Main passe (cat. no. 20). Lissitzky made a portfolio paratively low cost. Julius Meier-Graefe, Ambroise of lithographs Victory over the Sun, 1923 (cat. nos. Vollard and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler were among 34-36) after the 1 91 3 Futurist opera of the same the first dealers to recognize the value of prints name by A.