Timeline of 20th-century printmaking in America

This is a timeline of 20th-century printmaking in America.

20th century 1900s

1907 – Bertha Lum traveled to Japan to learn woodblock cutting. 1907 – Samuel Simon, an Englishman, held the earliest recorded patent for a silkscreen process; his process used a bristle brush rather than squeegee to distribute the color.

1910s 1910 – Chicago Society of Etchers was established, the country's first organization of etchers. The group promoted etching through traveling exhibitions around the country and hosting annual exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago until the Society's demise in 1972. 1912 – Pedro Joseph de Lemos established the California Society of Etchers (now the California Society of Printmakers). 1914 – A San Francisco-based commercial artist, John Pilsworth, perfected and patented a multicolor screen process, called the Selectasine method, leading to wide use of the screen print in the advertising industry. 1915 – A small group of printmakers, including Blanche Lazzell, formed the Provincetown Printers, a "pioneering woodblock print society – the first of its kind in America". The group developed a new form of woodblock printmaking known as the Provincetown print or white-line woodcut. Other members: Ada Gilmore, Mildred McMillen, Ethel Mars, Maud Squire. 1915 - The Brooklyn Society of Etchers, later to be re-named in 1931 the Society of American Etchers, Inc. then again in 1947 to the Society of Etchers, Gravers, Lithographers, and Woodcutters, Inc. is now known as Society of American Graphic Artists and was formed in New York City with the mission to give artists complete esthetic freedom for the artists; the integrity of personal vision. 1915 – The Print Club of Philadelphia, later to be re-named The Print Center, was founded in Philadelphia. It was one of the first venues in the country focused solely on the appreciation of prints. In 1942 The Print Center donated its collection of prints to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This donation became the heart of the museum's new department of prints. 1917 – George Miller set up a lithography print shop for fine artists in New York. 1919 – Bolton Brown established a lithography print shop for fine artists in New York.

1920s

1922 – The Art Students League of New York established a lithography workshop, led by Joseph Pennell. In response to growing demand, the League hired a full-time professional printer seven years later. 1923 – Louis Lozowick, a Ukraine-born master lithographer and "virtuosic precisionist", whose prints are in the collections of many museums and who often celebrated the American city in stylized cityscapes, created his first recorded lithographs (Cleveland and Chicago). 1927 – Elizabeth Olds became the first woman artist to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was later a silkscreen pioneer on the WPA/FAP Graphic Arts Division team (1936–40). She was also the first artist to actually create a serigraph, The Concert, while on the Silkscreen Unit. 1927 – The Society of American Printmakers was organized and began to offer shows that included prints in different media. In the late 1930s, it organized annual exhibitions. 1929 – Founding of The Colophon: A Book Collectors' Quarterly, which published issues during the 1930's and 1940's related to original printmaking and the book arts. Many issues included an original woodcut, lithograph, linocut, or etching that the publishers had commissioned.

1930s

1931 – Buffalo Print Club, with guidance from Kevin B. O'Callahan, was established this year, then hosted annual exhibitions through 1962, when it closed. 1933 – American printmaker Adolf Dehn set up the Adolf Dehn Print Club. For $5 annually subscribers got a brochure illustrating four of his lithos and could choose one to be mailed. His works were "visually sophisticated and mordantly witty but rarely politically challenging" and his skills were widely admired. The club had enough sales that he continued for several years. 1934 – Associated American Artists (AAA) was established by Reeves Lewenthal, and operated until 2000. In founding AAA he pioneered the mass merchandizing of prints, helping elevate them to a popular form of original art". 1935 – The Federal Art Project (FAP) was established, running until 1943. 1935 – 1935 New York anti-lynching exhibitions included lithographs alongside drawings, paintings and sculptures. 1936 – Audrey McMahon, a regional director for the Works Progress Administration's (WPA) Federal Art Project and an effective leader, oversaw the development of a printmaking workshop in New York City with a goal of stimulating experimentation and encouraging artists new to the process 1936 – WPA Federal Art Project (FAP) New York City Graphic Arts Division workshop opened, one of its sixteen printmaking facilities around the country, with professional printmakers on staff making it possible for artists to experiment with technically demanding methods beyond the artists' existing skills. 1936 – Printmaker Harry Sternberg awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for a project focusing on industrial subjects, traveling several times to Pennsylvania coal mining areas to study mining and meet miners. 1937 – Augusta Savage, a sculptor and influential teacher associated with the Harlem Renaissance, became the first director of the Harlem Community Art Center (part of the Federal Art Project). The Center became the "heart of the Harlem Renaissance as a learning and meeting place for the first generation of modern African-American artists." 1937 – African-American master printmaker and painter Dox Thrash joined the Fine Print Workshop of the Philadelphia Federal Art Project (of the WPA); He was the first African-American to join the workshop. Thrash co-discovered with Hugh Mesibov and Michael Gallagher the innovative Carborundum printmaking process, in which an artist grinds carborundum into a copper plate before inking it; the process "produced a wide range of rich tones and smoothly modeled forms". 1938 – An exhibit of about thirty carborundum prints by Dox Thrash and his WPA associates was held in New Techniques in WPA Graphic Arts at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.; at that time it was the most extensive display of new work produced by WPA printmakers. 1938 – First one-person show of silkscreen prints, Guy Maccoy – artist, sponsored by the Contemporary Arts Gallery, New York 1938 – Anthony Velonis, an experimental silkscreen pioneer and Federal Art Project team leader, encouraged the FAP to start a silkscreen project, which increased recognition of silkscreen as an art form. Also in that year Velonis wrote an important and influential pamphlet for artists, entitled "Technical Problems of the Artist: Technique of the Silkscreen Process". 1938 – The FAP Graphic Arts Division team that reinvigorated screen printing processes and pioneered new screen-printing technologies under the leadership of Anthony Velonis included Harry Gottlieb, Louis Lozowick, Eugene Morley, Elizabeth Olds, and Hyman J. Warsager. 1938–1939 – Louise Bourgeois, the French-American sculptor, painter, and printmaker made her first print, St. Germain, a holiday greeting card, in offset lithography. Bourgeois made additional cards in the 1940s. She purchased a small intaglio press to work on prints at her home. 1940 – By this year lithography had strongly surpassed etching in popularity as a printmaking process. Many artists and viewers were fascinated by the power and subtlety of B&W lithography. 1940 – Second one-person show of silkscreen prints, Harry Gottlieb – artist, sponsored by ACA (American Contemporary Art) Gallery 1940 – First group show of silkscreen prints. It was organized by Elizabeth McCausland, who was an art critic, historian, and writer, at the Springfield (MA) Art Museum. 1940 – The term 'serigraphy' was coined by Carl Zigrosser and Anthony Velonis, derived from the Latin word 'seri', meaning silk, and Greek word 'graphos', meaning to draw or write. They conceived of and promoted the term to draw a distinction between art prints and the commercial and industrial screen-processed images that were produced on a mass scale. 1940 – Stanley William Hayter, fled Paris and moved his experimental print workshop, Atelier 17, to New York for the duration of World War II. Atelier 17 closed in 1955. 1940 – National Serigraph Society founded. The group's original name was the Silk Screen Group until 1944. The Society's goal was to advance the interests of the new technique of serigraphy. The group conducted classes, ran a worldwide exhibition and information service, and provided a nation-wide lecture bureau and an exhibition and sales gallery in New York City. 1940 – The Museum of Modern Art held two exhibits, American Color Prints Under $10. The purpose was to make American art available for purchase to a wide audience, to make ownership of prints by living artists and artisans practical in homes, offices, churches and social groups. The shows were so successful that a third exhibition and sale of color prints was held in 1941. 1944 – Jackson Pollock went to Atelier 17 where in his etchings, using automatism, he created powerful and expressive prints that characterized an early form of American Abstract expressionism, with Picasso-derived elements from pre-war compositions. 1946 – Louise Bourgeois began making prints at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17, a leading printmaking workshop and studio in New York (previously in Paris). The following year she created a print project, her illustrated book called He Disappeared into Complete Silence, which included nine engravings, each accompanied by a parable written by the artist. She was fascinated by skyscrapers upon arrival in New York from Paris; the imagery in her project was mainly of these buildings. 1947 – Robert Blackburn, an African-American printmaker and highly regarded teacher, established the Printmaking Workshop in a Chelsea loft in New York City. Blackburn was a renowned master printer for Charles White, Faith Ringgold, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Betye Saar.

1950s 1951–1952 – Will Barnet experimented with multi-stone color lithographs in collaboration with Robert Blackburn at the latter's New York City workshop. 1956 – The Print Council of America was established. 1956 – The Pratt Graphics Center was established in New York City to be a stimulating experimental and international workshop at which students and artists would be welcome in an urban setting. It closed in 1986. 1957 – Tatyana Grosman established the Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) on Long Island. The first publication was Stones by Larry Rivers and Frank O'Hara. ULAE set a high standard for printmaking in the country after the war. Grosman was known for her "tenacious spirit" and dedication to the artists with whom she worked, and these personal qualities often elicited enthusiasm from artists previously unconvinced about the merits of printmaking. 1959 – George Lockwood established the Impressions Workshop in Boston, with a focus on lithography and intaglio printing, later adding screen printing. 1959 – June Wayne, founder of Tamarind Lithography Workshop (1960), in her funding proposal to the Ford Foundation to launch Tamarind, stated that the purpose of her project was to foster a renaissance in the art of the lithograph in America. She emphasized the vital role that a small number of creative artists can play in generating a renaissance in an art form, when the circumstances of their activities are fortuitous in time and place. A few master printers geographically dispersed in America, with clusters of eager artists learning from them, could lead to a resurgence in global interest.June Wayne, Proposal for the Planning and Development for Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Inc. July 1959, p. 25. Ford Foundation Archives, Report #60-119

1960s