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PRINT12 NOVEMBER 2018
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ISSN 2380-6613
VOLUME 4
On Mark Making. Dora Maurer’s Systemic Alchemy and Kinetic Captures / Collections From Behind the Iron Curtain: The Baruch Foundation / Victor Hulik: The Brink of Order and Chaos / In Crossing the Dreams to Unnamed Reality / Immersed in the 2018 International Print Triennial Krakow / Driven to Create: Bojan Golija’s Exhaustive and Varied Printmaking / Intimately Constructing Pillars of Compassion / New Variants in the Continuum of Polish Art Poster / The Ambivalence of Solitude and Perseverance of Existentialist Thought / The Precarious Process of Hand-Printing the Whales
K N I R B R E E H D T R O F O AND HAOS C
where print making takes center stage
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PRINT EDITOR KATERINA KYSELICA ARTICLE EDITOR TANYA SILVERMAN CONTRIBUTORS DOROTA FOLGA-JANUSZEWSKA, BARBARA KALWAJTYS, KATERINA KYSELICA, EMESE REVESZ, BREDA SKRJANEC, EVA TROJANOVA GRAPHIC DESIGN KADS NEW YORK WEB DESIGN KADS NEW YORK FONT CLARA BY ROSTISLAV VANEK
PUBLISHER KADS NEW YORK PRINTED EDITION BIANNUAL (OCTOBER, APRIL) INDIVIDUAL ISSUE: $30 USA, $35 WORLD DOUBLE ISSUE: $50 USA, $55 WORLD DIGITAL EDITION BIANNUAL (OCTOBER, APRIL) INDIVIDUAL ISSUE: $8 DOUBLE ISSUE: $12 VOLUME 4, NUMBER 1-2, NOVEMBER 2018 ISSN 2380-6613 Celebrating Print Magazine. Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. ©KADS New York. See the magazine online at www.celebratingprint.com. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher is prohibited. For customer service and/or reprints, send email to: info@ kadsny.com or write us at KADS NY, 321 E. 71st Str., Suite 3E, New York, NY 10021, USA.
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Image front cover: Viktor Hulik, Projection – Rotor II, 1984 (view of a rotating variant), offset print, crumple-age, relief collage, metal bearing on board, 17 3/4 x 17 3/4 inches (45 x 45 cm), unique, photograph by Martin Marencin.
FROM THE EDITOR
MAGAZINE ON FINE ART PRINT AND PRINTMAKING IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
AA Welcome to our fourth volume of Celebrating Print. This double issue contains comprehensive surveys of projects by three renowned artists: Dora Maurer (Hungary), Victor Hulik (Slovakia) and Bojan Golija (Slovenia). I hope you will become bedazzled by the extent of Dora Maurer’s experimentation realized through a classic printmaking technique, intaglio. Art historian Emese Revesz elucidates Maurer’s conceptions rooted in transmutation and action. Such free play also appears in Viktor Hulik’s practice. Eva Trojanova notes that “as Hulik endeavors to visually seize heterogeneity, continuous transformation and variability, his search never binds him to one medium.” Fixation over the visual effects of printmaking defined Bojan Golija’s enterprises, as examined thoroughly by Breda Skrjanec. In addition, Dorota Folga-Januszewska expands the discourse on printed matter by looking into poster as an autonomous art form. Considering the impact that the design of an image has on its perception, I have invited four artists—Endi Poskovic, Eva Hnatova, Jelena Petrovic and Zuzana Ruzickova—to expose their inner ruminations as they assess different technologies to best express their ideas. At last, Barbara Kalwajtys, director of the Baruch Foundation, tells the story of collectors Anne and Jacques Baruch, whose perseverance allowed many Eastern Bloc artworks to end up in American museum collections. AA Over the summer, I attended the 2018 International Print Triennial Krakow. Whilst visiting Grzegorz Banaszkiewicz’s Laboratory of Graphic Imagining, I became rapt by the effects of presented devices—stereoscopes and such—that revealed images moving, growing in size or appearing in illusionary depth. All were small in scale, scattered throughout the staged studio and, akin to the traditional print, required an intimate approach to seeing. Experiencing this rather historical version of virtual reality confirmed to me the urgency to discuss (and present) printmaking in its entirety, not as a confluence of analog versus digital, but as a printmaking ideology behind each project (the term used by Breda Skrjanec in this issue) or a printmaking way of thinking (as Dorota Folga-Januszewska explained in our Volume 2, no. 1). I may honestly state that, in the seven issues of Celebrating Print Magazine, we have comprehensively accredited diverse methods of printmaking together with open approaches to the medium. Unfortunately, Volume 4 shall be our final edition. AA I would like to express my sincerest thanks to the supportive readers of the publication. My gratitude also extends to the contributors who joined me throughout these years, volunteering their time and knowledge. The magazine has operated on a shoestring budget; this last issue would not exist without the financial contribution by Mr. Richard Polsky. I would like to honor his belief in my resolution to document the development of Central and Eastern European printmaking and leave a permanent record in art libraries. I also very much appreciate the relentless efforts of our article editor, Tanya Silverman, in ensuring the quality of the English texts whose manuscripts are sourced from various languages. It was a great pleasure for me to lead this team pursuit. Katerina Kyselica
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6–24
IN CROSSING THE DREAMS TO UNNAMED REALITY
VISIT
54–62
VIKTOR HULIK: THE BRINK OF ORDER AND CHAOS
PROJECT
46–53
COLLECTIONS FROM BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN: THE BARUCH FOUNDATION By Barbara Kalwajtys
FEATURE
31–45
ON MARK-MAKING. DORA MAURER’S SYSTEMIC ALCHEMY AND KINETIC CAPTURES By Emese Revesz
SPOTLIGHT
25–30
88-91
FEATURE
06–24
80–87 75-79
IMMERSED IN THE 2018 INTERNATIONAL PRINT TRIENNIAL KRAKOW By Katerina Kyselica
Since the 1960s, Hungarian multidisciplinary artist Dora Maurer has pursued printmaking to explore creative conceptions rooted in transmutation and action. Her printmaking laboratory in Budapest functions as an arena to document progressive methodical elements in traditional intaglio format. For Dora Maurer, process became the space “to figure it out.”
Throughout the latter half of the Cold War, in a space above Michigan Avenue, Chicago, art dealers Anne and Jacques Baruch invited guests to peer into the rich world of art from behind the Iron Curtain. Today, although the Jacques Baruch Gallery only exists in the memories of those fortunate enough to have experienced it, the Baruch Foundation continues its mission in finding the rightful place for Central and Eastern European art in museum collections.
By Eva Trojanova
Irritated by the statics of pictorial conventions, Slovak artist Viktor Hulik has been experimenting with space, color and technologies since the 1970s. His multimedia works and computer graphics disturb two types of order: the natural and the geometric. Printmaking for Hulik serves as a vehicle to navigate his continuous journey to capture the essence of change.
By Endi Poskovic
Two eloquently disquieting projects, Crossing and Dream, recent avatars of my ongoing traversal between the analog and digital realms, converge according to pillars of the printed image: multiplicity, seriality and translation. They reflect on a way of life unafflicated by temporality yet devastated by violent events.
Conceived as a mirror image of contemporary visual reality, the 2018 International Print Triennial Krakow in Poland brought under the summer spotlight 257 printmaking projects. From etchings, relief and screen prints, to video games, installations and laboratory extensions of movable imagery, the triennial surprisingly unveiled a romantic notion of the world through the resurfacing of humanity.
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63–74 31–45
NEW VARIANTS IN THE CONTINUUM OF POLISH ART POSTER By Dorota Folga-Januszewska
PROJECT
88–91
INTIMATELY CONSTRUCTING PILLARS OF COMPASSION
FEATURE
80–87
DRIVEN TO CREATE: BOJAN GOLIJA’S EXHAUSTIVE AND VARIED PRINTMAKING By Breda Skrjanec
PROJECT
75–79
FEATURE
63–74
92–95 46–53
THE AMBIVALENCE OF SOLITUDE AND PERSEVERANCE OF EXISTENTIALIST THOUGHT
Recognized as a “father of Maribor printmaking,” Slovenian artist Bojan Golija diligently explored the expressive abilities of printmaking not only to convey his interest in nature and Slovenian folklore but also to educate younger generations. Golija’s frequent crossing of artistic approaches and particular attitude towards color led to imagery shaped by stimuli from nearby as well as Japanese woodcut tradition and unconventional procedures.
By Eva Hnatova
The project To Touch is a process-based exploration of compassion fatigue induced by the visually saturated, 24-hour news stream. Through drawing on, hand-pressing or ironing carbon paper, a 19th-century invention for producing duplicates of textual matter, I have attempted to create a pictorial apparatus for reawakening the sensitivity of viewers to the suffering and hardship of others.
The 20th century proved a liberating era for the poster to break from its burdening position as a message-driven print announcement into a tasteful art form. In Poland, the (r)evolution extended into the new millennium, with poster as a print that transcends overt meaning.
By Jelena Petrovic
Despite the continuous progress in different areas of human activity, the insignificance of the individual afflicts our time. The presented lithographs shaped by bodily imprints render an image of a mortal coping with alienation, be it in solitude or isolation. The absurd lingers, as it did a century ago, perpetually reflected in the misunderstanding of life.
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PROJECT
92–95
THE PRECARIOUS PROCESS OF HAND-PRINTING THE WHALES By Zuzana Ruzickova Garnered in sealess Central Europe, my strong desire to see a whale prompted me to travel around the globe. I learned about the creature’s natural habitat while exploring printmaking in its elementary form—with hand-printed impressions that act as records of time, places and happenings.
CONTRIBUTORS 5
ON MARK-MAKING.
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CELEBRATING PRINT | Volume 4, Number 1-2 | november 2018
FEATURE
by Emese Revesz
DORA MAURER’S SYSTEMIC ALCHEMY AND KINETIC CAPTURES
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FEATURE
D ORA M AUR E R ’S SYST E MI C A LCH E MY A N D K IN E T IC CA PT U RES
Image previous spread: Private March on the 1st of May on Artificial Ground (Pedotype, Action Graphic), 1971, wood fibre, papermache, powder paint, wood-cement, dirt, photograph, 27 1/8 x 34 5/8 inches (69 x 88 cm), photograph by Miklos Sulyok, courtesy of Hungarian National Gallery: Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Lovely Neighborhood (from Everyday series), 1961, etching, 9 7/8 x 8 1/4 inches image size (25 x 21 cm), photograph by Miklos Sulyok, artist’s archive, Budapest. Dora Maurer in her studio in Budapest, c.1960, photograph by Miklos Tomai.
SINCE THE 1960S, HUNGARIAN MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST DORA MAURER HAS PURSUED PRINTMAKING TO EXPLORE CREATIVE CONCEPTIONS ROOTED IN TRANSMUTATION AND ACTION. HER PRINTMAKING LABORATORY IN BUDAPEST FUNCTIONS AS AN ARENA TO DOCUMENT PROGRESSIVE METHODICAL ELEMENTS IN TRADITIONAL INTAGLIO FORMAT. FOR DORA MAURER, PROCESS BECAME THE SPACE “TO FIGURE IT OUT.” 8
AA I have selected from Dora Maurer’s multifaceted oeuvre a single image-making medium, printmaking, as the focus of my treatise.1 While she completed her studies in printmaking at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts and produced an extensive body of prints between 1957 and 1980, my justification for this decision lies elsewhere. As she admitted in her book entitled Etching, Copper Engraving: “For a long time, printmaking provided me with a calming means for visual expression. Today it comprises a part of my activity in a very different—much more direct—manner, and I employ alternate methods as well. For years, not only did I spend my days engaging in precise studio work, but, to put things more poetically, ‘my existence intertwined with it.’”2 The artist’s choice of material for realizing a work of art becomes an especially important issue when it is no longer simply a technical regard but rather one that amounts to a principal component of that creation—the exact kernel of thought from which it had spawned. AA Dora Maurer’s oeuvre, which spans over half a century, is characterized by a rich toolset of artistic
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Image previous page: Jiri Anderle, Vanitas IX (Homage to Zdenek Sklenar), 1984, drypoint, soft ground etching, 26 1/8 x 19 3/8 inches, unique. Anne and Jacques Baruch in Rochester, New York, 1978, unidentified photographer.
COLLECTIONS FROM BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN: THE BARUCH FOUNDATION by Barbara Kalwajtys
Throughout the latter half of the Cold War, in a space above Michigan Avenue, Chicago, art dealers Anne and Jacques Baruch invited guests to peer into the rich world of art from behind the Iron Curtain. Today, although the Jacques Baruch Gallery only exists in the memories of those fortunate enough to have experienced it, the Baruch Foundation continues its mission in finding the rightful place for Central and Eastern European art in museum collections.
AA All prints courtesy of the Baruch Foundation archive and photographed by Aidan Fitzpatrick, unless otherwise noted.
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CELEBRATING PRINT | Volume 4, Number 1-2 | november 2018
T H E BA RU CH FOU N DATI ON
SPOTLIGHT
Jiri Anderle, Amour and Psyche (after Gerard) (from cycle Dialogues with the Great Masters), 1984, drypoint, soft ground and hard ground etching, 37 5/8 x 25 1/4 image size, edition of 70, E.A. XXX, H.C. 6.
AA Anne was born and raised in Chicago and in 1951 married Jacques Baruch, a Holocaust survivor from Poland. Jacques was a trained architect who designed homes in the Chicago area for some years. In 1966, he visited Poland for the first time after the war. He wanted to see the state of the country and find out if any friends or family remained there (he had lost his parents to the Nazis). Because the Baruchs had decided to open a gallery in Chicago featuring artists from Central and Eastern Europe, this trip also allowed Jacques the opportunity to collect art for their premiere exhibition in 1967. AA The couple’s interest in expanding their knowledge of Eastern Bloc countries compelled them to travel to Czechoslovakia in 1968. Fatefully arriving during the high tide of the Prague Spring, they met many of their gallery’s future mainstays. The Baruchs planned out exhibitions for their eponymous Chicago gallery, however, the hopes of the promising program would only crumble the day after their departure, due to the advancing Soviet tanks. The invasion’s political repercussions halted the previously granted freedoms. Heartbroken and worried for their new friends, they refused to give up and pursued their agenda with Art Centrum, the government art and shipping agency at that time. After persistent contact, the Baruchs received most of the art purchases they had arranged on that inaugural journey and were able to open their first Czech exhibition in that following summer. AA So began years of work that were frustrating and sometimes daunting, but always rewarding. The gallerists often dealt with scrutiny from the Communist authorities, border guards and customs agents—not to mention the multiple risks the artists faced—and yet they persevered with acquiring art via official channels as well as by surreptitious means. They focused on works on paper for ease of transport. The gallery also featured fiber artists from Poland, including Magdalena Abakanowicz, Lilla Kulka and Jolanta Owidzka, along with Czechoslovakia’s Jan Hladik. Pieces by Yugoslav artists Juraj Dobrovic, Edo Murtic and Rudi Spanzel went on display there, too. Interestingly, the Baruchs were among the first
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CELEBRATING PRINT | Volume 4, Number 1-2 | november 2018
PROJECT
IN CROSSING THE DREAMS TO UNNAMED REALITY by Endi Poskovic
Two eloquently disquieting projects, Crossing and Dream, recent avatars of my ongoing traversal between the analog and digital realms, converge according to pillars of the printed image: multiplicity, seriality and translation. They reflect on a way of life unafflicated by temporality yet devastated by violent events in the country of my birth, Yugoslavia.
Srebreni (I was born into great joy), 2015–2018, woodcut printed from 5 interchangeable plates in 8 colors on Kozo Okawara paper, 28 x 20 inches image size, 32 x 24 inches paper size, unique, photograph by the artist.
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Conceived as a mirror image of contemporary visual reality, the 2018 International Print Triennial Krakow in Poland brought under the summer spotlight 257 printmaking projects. From etchings, relief and screen prints, to video games, installations and laboratory extensions of movable imagery, the triennial surprisingly unveiled a romantic notion of the world through the resurfacing of humanity.
Grzegorz Banaszkiewicz’s Laboratory of the Graphic Imagining, 2018, dimensions variable. Photograph by Lech Polcyn and Karol Szafran, courtesy of International Print Triennial Society in Krakow.
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CELEBRATING PRINT | Volume 4, Number 1-2 | november 2018
VISIT
by Katerina Kyselica
IMMERSED IN THE 2018 INTERNATIONAL PRINT TRIENNIAL KRAKOW AA Photographs in this article by the author, unless otherwise noted.
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TRANSGRAFIA contemporary Polish printmaking
Presented in conjunction with the triennial, Transgrafia was conceived as a showcase for Polish artistic independence. The venue, a revitalized building within the old tobacco factory Tytano Dolne Mlyny, became a lively meeting place for “intellectual transactions and transmission of good energy.” Printmaking was omnipresent, in holograms, murals, videos, interactive games, postage stamps, mixed media projects, multiples and installations that participants could touch or walk through.
Zuzana Dyrda’s project Play with Me (digital print, magnetic board, installation), 2018, variable dimensions, exhibited at Transgrafia.
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CELEBRATING PRINT | Volume 4, Number 1-2 | november 2018
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FEATURE
by Breda Skrjanec
Driven to Create: Bojan Golija’s Exhaustive and Varied Printmaking CELEBRATINGPRINT.COM
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Work in a Rice Field, 1959, woodcut, 18 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches (47 x 59.5 cm), edition of 7. From Istrian Salt Pans, 1957, woodcut, 24 5/8 x 17 3/8 inches (62.5 x 44 cm).
AA In 1954, Bojan Golija (1932–2014), a Maribor1 native, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana’s printmaking program. He traveled to Japan in 1957 to study and teach for seven months. After returning, he taught drawing at the Elementary School Kamnica near Maribor, then at the Maribor Teachers’ College along with the Pedagogical Gymnasium. The artist was one of the first professors at the Pedagogical Academy, and he later continued his career at the Faculty of Education of the University of Maribor. In addition to his academic pursuits, he developed into a key cultural figure for the northeastern region of Slovenia. AA Golija, who enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in 1949, belongs to the institution’s fifth generation of students. At the time when his expressive profile was forming as an art student, printmaking in Slovenia started gaining momentum, eventually evolving into a high-quality, endemic phenomenon in the 1950s, with lithography as the most popular technique. Horizons broadened
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as personalities began resuming contacts with the outer world. Yugoslavia’s societal and economic opening to the West engendered an inflow of novelties that permeated into Slovenian art, inspiring subjective tendencies that translated into derivatives of surrealism, and later of other genres (including abstract ones). The indigenous artistic sphere modernized from 1950 to 1955, as Ljubljana blossomed into a hub for global exhibitions, especially related to printmaking. Local printmakers, such as Bozidar Jakac and Riko Debenjak, began participating in established international art shows and gained worldwide visibility. France Mihelic’s prints were awarded at the Venice Biennial (1954); his woodcuts constituted one of the highpoints of Slovenian arts for that decade. A distinct printmaking culture emerged in this midst that later, albeit in a series of variations, became most vividly expressed by representatives of a movement known as the Ljubljana School of Graphic Art. Zoran Music, together with Mihelic, also prompted a curious development, namely the “search for national identity
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FEATURE
BOJ A N G OLIJ A’ S EX H A U ST IVE A N D VA RIE D P RIN T MAKI NG
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to break from its burdening
Filip Tofil (Syfon Studio), A Football Player Does His Best If Euro Is at Stake, 2012, digital print, 39 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches (100.5 x 70 cm), artist’s archive.
the 20th century proved a liberating era for the poster
position
as a message-driven print announcement
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FEATURE
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celebrating
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE
Slovenian Printmaking: A Journey Through Six Decades / Exploring the Physical State of the Matrix / In Krakow, Printmaking Persists with Tradition and Experimentation /Letterist Eduard Ovcacek Continues Into the Digital Age / Collages in the Third Dimension, Revering Jiri Kolar / In a Space Where Each Dot Matters: Vojtech Kovarik on Reality and the Raster / Christopher Nowicki’s Take on Mezzotint, Teaching, and the Raven.
PRINT AND SPACE AS ONE Fortuity of Making and Print Tradition in Josip Butkovic's Practice / For Dusan Kallay, Everything Relates to Everything Else / Vincent Hloznik's Dreams / A Subconscious Key to Ordering the World: The Artist's Book in Poland / Jan Mericka's Screen Printed Transcriptions of Human Motion / 21 Fragments of Yesterday and Tomorrow / Print and Space as an Enduring Challenge in Three Rooms /
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Modernist Universalism Revived: Linocut Portraits by Joanna Piech-Kalarus / Jiri Lindovsky on the Technical Mystery and Creative Intelligence / Alems, Tobacco Leaves and Puppets: Zdenka Golob’s Printmaking Journey / Ewa Budka: The Skin I Have Been Living In
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A matter of coincidences Jan Krizek's Prints as Two-Dimensional Sculptures / Prints and Politics: The Mako Graphic Artists' Colony / The Topography of Life: Janez Knez, a Printmaker / Vladimir Boudnik and Czech Structural Printmaking / Tajtania's Architectural Illusions and Layered Memories
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where print making takes center stage
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