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10/6/2003

Bob Blackburn

Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art, New York

...and the Printmaking Workshop
A Tribute to Robert Blackburn 1920 - 2003

Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art (PSCA) announces the opening of a new exhibit entitled Bob Blackburn and the Printmaking Workshop, featuring prints by the late Blackburn and more than a dozen of his students at the Printmaking Workshop in New York City.

This unique look at various members of the Printmaking Workshop will be presented along with a few prints which Blackburn himself made. Lenore RS Lim and Denise Kasof have acted as coordinators for the exhibit, inviting colleagues from the PWS to participate in the show which is curated by Paul Sharpe. In contrast to the CREATIVE SPACE: Fifty Years Of Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop, presented this spring by the Library of Congress, which presented Blackburn along with some of the masters of the 20th century, this show features printmakers in New York who are exhibiting their works as a tribute to the outstanding accomplishments and contributions Blackburn made during his lifetime to both the technique and advancement of printmaking and to the resources and mentoring he provided to developing printmakers, many of whom were minorities.

The show features the following 22 artists:
Robert Blackburn, Kathy Caraccio, Devraj Dakoji, Eduardo Fausti, Edward Fausty, Ana Golici, Elizabeth Harrington, Robin Holder, Denise Kasof, Mohammad Khalil, Lenore RS Lim, Armando Lonodono, Otto Neals, Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov, Sarah Sears, Lynne Taetzsch, Bruce Waldman, Leslie Wasserberger, Gwen Williams, and Alexander Zakharov. The artists' names in bold indicate those who were included in the recent exhibit at the Library of Congress.

Robert Blackburn was born in Summit, New Jersey, in 1920 and grew up in Harlem. He passed away in New York City in April 2003. He attended public schools, including PS5, and he studied at the Arts Students League, where he was taught by Will Barnet, who later co-founded the Printmaking Workshop with him in 1948. He also studied at the Uptown Art Laboratory, Wallace Harrison School of Art, and Atelier 17. According to the Library of Congress text, "Blackburn was influenced by the intellectual and artistic legacies of the Harlem Renaissance as well as European abstraction and the artistic ideologies and political tendencies of both American social realism and Mexican modernism."

Blackburn studied at the Harlem Recreation Arts Center, where he met Romare Bearden, Roy DeCarava, Langston Hughes, Jacob Lawrence, and Paul Robeson. His teachers were Selma Burke, Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden, Jacob Lawrence, and Augusta Savage, who were employed as part of the WPA/FAP (Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project). This was one of the few centers in which black students worked exclusively under the tutelage of black artists, exploring lithography, etching, woodblock making, and silk screening. The HRAC closed in 1941 and the WPA ended in 1943. One of Blackburn's most significant prints is People In A Boat, 1937, which he created when he was 17 at the HRAC. From 1957 to 1963, Blackburn was the first master printer to be associated with Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), where he printed for Jim Dine, Helen Frankethaler, Grace Hartigan, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Larry Rivers, and his work in the 1950s helped spur the art graphics explosion of the 1960s.

The Printmaking Workshop was originally established in 1948 as The Creative Graphic Workshop and was named the Printmaking Workshop in 1963 and incorporated as a not-for-profit in 1971. Lithography, etching, relief printing, and photoetching processes were available. This diversified atmosphere, both in terms of techniques and the world-class calibur of participating artists, provided a creative experience superior to that of established educational settings. The PMW was a place of dedication, encouragement, and an embracing sense of community for such artists as Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Augusta Savage, and Ursala Von Rydingsvard.

Blackburn has taught at Columbia University, Cooper Union, The New School for Social Research, New York University, and the School of Visual Arts. He did not attend college. In 1992, he received the John T and Catherine D MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and in 2000, Blackburn received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the College Art Association and the National Fine Print Association. His Printmaking Workshop influenced literally thousands of artists and its archives, equipment, and materials have been moved to the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York for preservation and for a new work space to be entitled the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.

Opening June 11th, 6 - 9 PM, thru July 12th.

ADMISSION Free

RSVP 646 613 1252

The gallery is open on Wednesday through Saturday from Noon to 6 PM, and by appointment.

Image: Bob Blackburn Urban Renewal, 1996, A/P First Proof, Second Printing, Lithograph, 19 x 21 inches

Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art
86 Walker Street Floor Six New York NY 10013
646 613 1252
(Walker is one block below Canal Street, between Broadway and Lafayette)

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