Founded in 2000, Philagrafika is a regional consortium of individuals and organizations interested in understanding the impact of the printed image in contemporary art. In April 2006 its founding name was changed from the Philadelphia Print Collaborative to Philagrafika, but its mission to promote and sustain printmaking as a vital and valued art form by providing artistic, programmatic and administrative leadership for large-scale, cooperative initiatives with broad public exposure remains the same. Building upon the region's rich history and abundant artistic resources, Philagrafika not only encourages a critical dialogue, but it continues to provide benefits for the local arts community by enhancing the city's presence as an international center for printmaking. All of this is realized through international contemporary art festivals, an annual invitational portfolio, and various notable public projects. Philagrafika's programs have been designed to promote new curatorial and critical models for printmaking-disciplines in which the medium is (re)presented as an integral component of current artistic practices.
In 2010 Philagrafika produced the first international, multi-sited art exhibition and festival in Philadelphia that celebrated the printed image as a core strategy for artists today. Titled Philagrafika 2010, it debuted as one of the largest art events in the United States and the world's most important print-related exposition. Philagrafika artistic director, Jose Roca, led a team of curators from Philadelphia museums and galleries who developed a set of curated exhibitions that premiered in January 2010 and ran through April 2010 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. This region wide event joined prominent museums, cultural institutions, over 1000 artists, and a curatorial team to collaboratively forge the way for what will become a recurring event in Philadelphia.
Philagrafika 2010 was divided into three components. Housed in five local museums/galleries, The Graphic Unconscious was the core exhibition, with over 35 artists from 18 countries. Out of Print, the second component matched five artists with five historic institutions in Philadelphia where they created new works inspired by that institutions unique collection. Seventy-five additional cultural institutions within Philadelphia organized the final component, Independent Projects . This component included an array of monographic, group, and thematic exhibitions that emphasized the printed image as its main tenet.
The Graphic Unconscious
Out of Print
The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney. It is a large and well-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and Documenta, it is one of the longest running exhibitions of its kind and was the first biennale to be established in the Asia-Pacific region.
Paul Hambleton Landacre was an American artist based in Los Angeles. His artistic innovations and technical virtuosity gained wood engraving a foothold as a high art form in twentieth-century America. Landacre's linocuts and wood engravings of landscapes, still lifes, nudes, and abstractions are acclaimed for the beauty of their designs and a mastery of materials. He used the finest inks and imported handmade Japanese papers and, with a few exceptions, printed his wood engravings in his studio on a nineteenth-century Washington Hand Press, which is now in the collection of the International Printing Museum in Carson, California.
Alicia Candiani is an Argentine artist specializing in printmaking and digital media. She is an active participant in the international printmaking community.
Glasgow Print Studio is an arts organisation situated in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1972, Glasgow Print Studio is an organisation with charitable status that exists to encourage and promote the art of printmaking; it is supported by Creative Scotland and Glasgow City Council.
Jenny Mannerheim is an Art Director, Editor and Curator born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1977. Since 2024 she has been Editor-in-Chief of L'Officiel Riviera and L'Officiel St. Barth. She is also the art director of L'Officiel Art.
The Cinematheque, founded in 1972, is a Canadian charity and non-profit film institute, media education centre, and film exhibitor based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Helen C. Frederick is an American artist, curator, and the founder of Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, an arts organization in Maryland. She is known mainly for printed media and large-scale works created by hand papermaking as a medium of expression that often incorporate the use of language. She has curated exhibitions such as Ten Years After 9/11, which respond to issues about the human condition.
Carol Wax is an American artist, author and teacher whom the New York Times called "a virtuoso printmaker and art historian" for her work in mezzotint and her writings on the history and technique of that medium.
Tetsuya Noda is a contemporary artist, printmaker and educator. He is widely considered to be Japan’s most important living print-artist, and one of the most successful contemporary print artists in the world. He is a professor emeritus of the Tokyo University of the Arts. Noda is most well-known for his visual autobiographical works done as a series of woodblock, print, and silkscreened diary entries that capture moments in daily life. His innovative method of printmaking involves photographs scanned through a mimeograph machine and then printed the images over the area previously printed by traditional woodblock print techniques onto the Japanese paper. Although this mixed-media technique is quite prosaic today, Noda was the first artist to initiate this breakthrough. Noda is the nephew of Hideo Noda an oil painter and muralist.
Kathy Rae Huffman is an American curator, writer, producer, researcher, lecturer and expert for video and media art. Since the early 1980s, Huffman is said to have helped establish video and new media art, online and interactive art, installation and performance art in the visual arts world. She has curated, written about, and coordinated events for numerous international art institutes, consulted and juried for festivals and alternative arts organisations. Huffman not only introduced video and digital computer art to museum exhibitions, she also pioneered tirelessly to bring television channels and video artists together, in order to show video artworks on TV. From the early 1990s until 2014, Huffman was based in Europe, and embraced early net art and interactive online environments, a curatorial practice that continues. In 1997, she co-founded the Faces mailing list and online community for women working with art, gender and technology. Till today, Huffman is working in the US, in Canada and in Europe.
Katie Baldwin is an American printmaker and book artist specializing in mokuhanga and letterpress. Mokuhanga is the contemporary application of traditional Japanese water-based woodblock printing techniques. Baldwin was first introduced to mokuhanga as a student at the Evergreen State College, where she graduated with a BA in 1994. Baldwin's journey with letterpress began in the 90s in Olympia in a printer's garage letterpress studio and expanded when she shared a studio with Amber Bell and other doers and makers at 508 Legion Way, the origins of Community Print. Community Print continues to be a member-run, community- supported printmaking studio and creative space operating in downtown Olympia, Washington for over 25 years.
STPI - Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore is a creative workshop and contemporary art gallery based in Singapore that specialises in artistic experimentation in the medium of print and paper. To date, STPI has collaborated with over 90 artists from all over the world.
NIVAL (National Irish Visual Arts Library) is a public research resource which is dedicated to the documentation of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Irish visual art and design. It collects, stores and makes available for research documentation of Irish art and design in all media. NIVAL's collection policy encompasses Irish art and design from the entire island, Irish art and design abroad, and non-Irish artists and designers working in Ireland. NIVAL is sustained by material contributions from artists, arts organisations and arts workers. Information is also acquired from galleries, cultural institutions, critics, the art and design industries, and national and local authorities responsible for the visual arts. NIVAL is housed on the campus of the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin.
The Print Center is a nonprofit gallery located in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. Originally known as The Print Club, the gallery's mission is to "encourage the growth and understanding of photography and printmaking as vital contemporary arts through exhibitions, publications and educational programs".
Tarnanthi is a Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art held in Adelaide, South Australia, annually. Presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) in association with the South Australian Government and BHP. It is curated by Nici Cumpston.
Robert Brokl is an American visual artist and activist based in the Bay Area, known for expressive woodblock printmaking and painting that has focused on the figure, landscape and travel for subject matter. His visual language combines the influences of German Expressionism, Japanese woodblock printing and the Bay Area Figurative Movement with a loosely autobiographical, Romantic interest in representing authentic personal experience, inner states and nature. Critics and curators characterize his style by its graphic line, expressive gestural brushwork, tactile surfaces and sensitivity to color, mood and light.
Hugh Mesibov was an American abstract expressionist artist who began his career as a federal artist for the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression and later became a member of the 10th Street galleries and part of the New York School during the 1940s-60s. His work has elements of the mid-20th-century New York artistic experience such as Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist and figurative aspects across several media such as watercolor, oil, and acrylic as well as etchings, lithographs and monoprints. His work has received a global reputation and is included in many collections in the United States and worldwide.
Yozo Hamaguchi was a Japanese copper printmaker who specialized in mezzotint and was responsible for its resurgence as a printmaking medium in the mid-20th century. Hamaguchi's prints are distinguished for their careful attention to detail of boldly hued animals and objects contrasted against a velvety black background. The corpus of Hamaguchi's prints are focused on the still life genre.
This is a timeline of 20th-century printmaking in America.
Ansei Uchima was an American artist and teacher primarily known as a sōsaku-hanga woodblock printmaker who employed traditional ukiyo-e Japanese techniques to produce abstract works covering a range of distinct personal styles.